


Intro To Romantic Escapism

by gooddaysunshine



Category: Black Friday - Team StarKid, Hatchetfield Universe - Team StarKid, The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Awkward Flirting, Drinking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Language, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Mutual Pining, Paulkins - Freeform, Romance, Sexual Content, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, literally no one this time, u better believe i'm going back to my roots and doing a college au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:27:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 61,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27791509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gooddaysunshine/pseuds/gooddaysunshine
Summary: Paul just got dumped. He is a sad sack drunk mess at a party he didn't even want to go to, wherein he finds his ex-girlfriend with a new guy she's been seeing. Enter Emma, who is willing and ready to be a friend to a sad drunk boy she just met during a strange bathroom altercation. Neither one of them wanted anything in particular from this. As per usual, though, emotions don't exactly play out as they want them to.a fun lil college AU y'all.
Relationships: Paul Matthews/Emma Perkins
Comments: 388
Kudos: 75





	1. Basic Tequila Management

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here I am. Back on my bullshit with two unfinished stories, starting another one.
> 
> We've got plans here for this one, though, so I hope you all enjoy :D
> 
> Also just a heads up: I will let y'all know when there's going to be stuff that requires a content warning like the sexy stuff and all that jazz.

Paul did not want to be at this party.

First of all, he didn’t go to parties. He was more out of place than a crayon in a box of markers. Everything around him smelled like body odor and cheap tequila. Quite frankly, he wanted to vomit. Even more so than when he thought it was a good idea to drink the rest of the plastic handle of vodka left underneath his bed. That was his second and bigger reason for not wanting to be there, Jess Sanders was there with the guy she just started seeing. She looked happy, and knowing she hadn't looked at him the way she was looking at this dude also made him feel like he was going to vomit.

He pressed his back up against the cool wall of the cramped, hideously wallpapered bathroom and closed his eyes. Things sucked. People constantly said that college was going to bring him some of the best years of his life, but so far it just gave him weekly anxiety attacks and an aversion to Jose Cuervo. They were all wrong or a bunch of idiots. He couldn't be sure which but struggled to hold down another sip of whatever disgusting punch was being served downstairs.

To be fair, he shouldn't have insulted the decor or the punch too much because he had no idea whose house it was exactly. He had come with Ted (who somehow ended up at the same school as him) despite not really having the energy to go. As it was, his head felt like it was full of bees. Just buzzing around, flitting between thoughts like he was going from flower to flower. Another swallow of whatever red liquid came from the less than clean looking plastic punch bowl. His hand squeezed around the cup, eyes sliding shut.

He and Jess had been dating for well over a year when she just up and dumped him out of nowhere. Well, according to her, it hadn’t been out of nowhere. Things had been in a gradual decline apparently for months. He hadn’t noticed. Everything had been going fine. They had been going  _ well _ even. The relationship had been progressing as it should have. There were talks of finding an apartment off campus just for the two of them. Something affordable but more private than where either one of them had been living at the present time. Maybe another roommate but maybe not. They had been happy, or at least that was what he thought.

It had only been two weeks since he was dumped by his first  _ real _ girlfriend, and she was at this fucking party with another dude. Not only was his ride Ted, but that very ride was nowhere to be found. Judging by the change in music from whatever bass heavy songs he couldn’t recognize to Bonnie Tyler’s  _ Holding Out For a Hero _ , Ted had found his way to wherever the music was being controlled. Paul should have hauled himself up and out and told Ted to bring him home, yet there he was. Still sitting on the bathroom floor. He picked at a chipping pink tile on the floor. The grout looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in months. Had he been slightly more sober he would have been horrified. However, the booze running through his veins was distraction enough.

God, what were his parents going to say? They weren’t the fondest of him. Of all the brothers, he was definitely the least liked, but they  _ did  _ like Jess. She was the sort of girl his parents wanted for their sons. Tall and blonde. Smart with a good head on her shoulders. Passive enough with a slight edge to her that made for decent conversation. She fell right into line with the other women his brothers chose to be with. It felt like the planets had all aligned for him. His parents were happy. He was happy, or he thought he was.

On the other side of the bathroom door, someone crashed into the wall. A burst of laughter roared through the tight hallway. The house, which was a generous way to put the three bed, one bath floor of the building that the party was taking place in, was definitely filled past capacity. He thought about the potential fire hazard for just a moment before shrugging it off. At this point, perishing in the midst of a shitty college party half drunk off of cheap tequila felt like it was par for course. Right on schedule for the way his life was going. 

Outside the window, he heard the metal of the fire escape creak. Another thing he had taken note of upon entering. The thing would have likely collapsed under the weight of drunken panicking college kids scrambling out in the event of an emergency. While the image of a pathetic drunk Titanic scene did mildly amuse him, he couldn’t help but wonder about the design choice of having a fire escape outside of a bathroom. His brows raised as the thought grew louder in his head with the window gently sliding open. He supposed that being murdered at a shitty college party was pretty on point as well. 

Instead of a grizzled, hockey mask-adorning murderer, though, the face of a girl stared back at him. The first thing he noticed were her eyes. They looked at him, wide in shock. A warm cinnamon brown lined with a navy blue eyeliner that was a little smudged beneath her left eye. Her jaw was sharp and squared. Likely due, in part, to her clenching her jaw at the sight of this guy sitting on the bathroom floor. High cheekbones that looked sharp enough to cut right through him if need be. And a bow of a mouth covered in a faded red lipstick. 

Not how he pictured his murderer, but nothing was going like he thought it would.

“Hey,” she greeted hesitantly. Slowly, she lowered herself into the bathroom. She wore a pair of high waisted well worn jeans and a tank top that had seen better days. The black fabric stretched across her chest, and he was fairly certain he could make out the lacy pattern of her lavender bra. Not that he was looking that hard… not really at least. She was small. He would have pegged her as standing somewhere around five foot. Probably a full foot shorter than him. Her hair fell around her face in untamed curls, cut right at her jawline. Half of it was pulled into a messy bun on the back of her head. A silver hoop hung in her nostril. “Are… you okay?”

He blinked up at her. Maybe he was hallucinating. A girl literally just crawled in through a bathroom window off of a fire escape. He was half drunk. Jess was outside macking on some guy who was arguably bigger and better looking than him. Ted was playing  _ Heart of Glass _ by Blondie on blast over the speakers. It very well could have all been a fever dream. “I’m… um… fine?” he responded more as a question than he anticipated. Because he really wasn’t. He was heartbroken and a little numb and depressed all at once. According to Jess, that was just how he acted normally. A little aloof. A little down. It was how he always had been. That was just his personality, which he had been forthcoming about from day one, yet his misery is apparently what drove her away. 

The girl’s hand lifted to her neck to toy with the charm on her necklace. A delicate gold chain with what appeared to be a small rabbit hanging from it. “You sure?” she asked, clearly not believing him. In all fairness, though, it was strange for her to be taking this much interest in a stranger she just climbed into the bathroom with, but it was nice to have someone check on him. Even if he had no idea who she was or what she was doing sneaking into this house. “You don’t really seem all that okay.”

A cool late summer breeze blew through the still open window. School hadn’t been back in session for even three weeks. September was creeping by slowly but surely. He had moved back into the old apartment only to be broken up with three days later, having to start class the following week. It had been a rough three and a half weeks. “My girlfriend dumped me, and everything feels bad,” he mumbled before taking a sip of his shitty punch. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was telling this mystery girl anything. It was probably because she asked. No one else had that night, and he was not okay. “She’s here with this other guy, and… I don’t know.”

She sucked her tongue against her teeth as she plopped down onto the closed toilet. “Yikes, dude,” she replied, nodding. The toe of her beat up red Converse tapped lightly against the tile. He could see another cracked tile at the base of the toilet. He sure hoped whoever lived at this place wasn’t paying too much to live there. “That’s a bummer.” She picked at the chipping green nail polish off of her thumb as she spoke. There seemed to be a constant movement with her, which normally would have driven him up a wall, but he found it pleasantly distracting at that moment. He really hoped she wasn’t a murderer, though he wasn’t fully sure why that hope was so loud in his brain. She looked over to him, eyebrow arched. “Is he hot?”

The term rolled around lazily in his brain. Was Lucas Doyle hot? Well, Tom played lacrosse. Lucas worked out everyday. Lucas was studying history and wore these glasses that made him look cool and sensitive. Lucas had a headful of black curls and a smile that was blinding. Lucas was kind and funny and would intently listen to anyone who spoke to him, staring them down with golden hazel eyes. Lucas, ultimately, was like a Disney prince come to life. Paul sighed, closing his eyes as he leaned his head back up against the wall. “Yes,” he admitted with a sigh. “He’s hot.” If it had been another person, he might have asked himself what Jess saw in him, but he was well aware of what she saw in Lucas Doyle. He was  _ painfully _ aware.

A hum came in response as the girl pulled her legs up underneath her to sit cross legged on the toilet lid. One of his eyes opened slowly and fell directly on her. Her arms were toned and tanned. On her shoulder, there was a large moth tattooed with delicate shading and detailing beneath an upside down crescent moon. A small skull was illustrated at the head of the moth. “That’s rough, buddy,” she told him. She tucked a tuft of hair behind her ear, revealing a set of small gold hoops lining the cartilage of her ear. Small stars were stuck at the bottom of her ear. He wasn’t sure he recognized her, so maybe she didn’t go to the same college as him. She really looked like someone who generally gave him a side eye for no particular reason. Not a person who would stop and ask him if he was okay. A smirk quirked up on her lips. His stomach lurched. For a moment, he thought he might throw up, but he wasn’t sure that was the exact feeling he was having. Her teeth peeked out from behind her red lips as she looked at him. “Want to make out in front of her? Make her a little jealous?”

His eyes went wide. “I’m sorry?” he spat out. He could feel his cheeks burning red and was sure she could see it too. This was a time, though, that he couldn’t blame his incessant nervousness for the blush. It was a fair thing to go red in the face at. He had been talking to this girl for all of two minutes, and now she was asking him to make out with her. This wasn’t something that happened to plain old Paul.

She shrugged. “Listen, you’re cute,” she said plainly. He blinked. Cute? She tilted her head to the side in order to analyze him better. “A little sad looking but still cute.” A hand lifted and gestured to herself. “And listen, I’m big enough to admit that I look fucking  _ hot _ tonight, so why not? You’re a little drunk already anyway. Worst case, blame it on their off label booze.” Another beat of silence passed between them. “What do you say, sad bathroom boy?”

The sound of his heartbeat was drumming in his ears. He was pretty sure he might throw up his shitty punch and the ramen he ate before leaving his apartment at any moment. Truthfully, she was hot. He had immediately been oddly relieved that if he was going to die at least his final sight was going to be a strange mystery pretty girl. “Okay,” he answered. The word left his mouth without him allowing it. He was pretty sure the tequila was talking. Plain old Paul did not make out with strangers. “Yeah, sure.” Apparently, half drunk Paul did.

“Fucking sick,” she chirped, hopping down from her perch on the toilet. Her fingers wrapped around his wrist. “C’mon, let’s giddy the fuck up, buckaroo!” Despite himself, he found he was laughing at her sudden perkiness. He pulled himself up to his feet, head spinning a little both with anxiety and punch. She dragged him toward the door, which swung open to blast them with the smell of weed and vomit and the musings of Boston’s  _ More Than a Feeling. _ Ted clearly wasn’t getting any action like he had hoped to at this party. 

He followed her through the narrow hallway that was lined with people he vaguely recognized. Her hand moved from his wrist and into his. His heart beat faster. The wooden floors beneath the carpet groaned beneath their feet. He couldn’t hear it between the music and the chatter, but the old building definitely wasn’t used to holding this much dead weight, vibrating beneath each heavy step he took. In the doorway of the bedroom they passed, he could just barely make out the shape of two figures in the dim light halfway on the messy bed. Another guy had passed out against the doorframe with a beer still in his hand that Paul nearly tripped on.

In the main living space, people mulled about with heavy lids and lazy smiles. Everyone was likely either drunk or high. This was why he didn’t go to these things. None of it was really his speed. He didn’t feel like incurring the wrath of his parents if he got caught high on anything, and he was a sad stupid drunk. Neither thing was really appealing to him. She stopped suddenly, causing him to nearly crash into her. She pushed herself up onto her tip toes to get closer to his ear. “Which one is she?” she hollered just loud enough so he could hear her. She smelled like cloves, vanilla, and cigarettes.

Glancing down at her, he swallowed hard. He had almost forgotten about Jess. The girl and her constant buzzing at given him a sense of tunnel vision he was positive was caused in part by the drunkenness. His eyes darted around the room. Everything was going a little funny at the corners of his vision, but he could spot Jess’s golden blonde head anywhere. He pointed in the direction of the far corner of the living room, where she was leaning into Lucas Doyle’s side, laughing harder than he could ever remember. “That one,” he told the girl.

“Damn, dude,” she hooted, smacking his chest. “You were tapping that?” He shrugged. “Well, I don’t know how I’m gonna compare, but what the hell, right?” Her hand found his once more and began to guide him through the crowd, ducking and weaving through a sea of drunken babies. Somewhere in the background he could have sworn he heard Ted shout his name, but he couldn’t be bothered to look back. His eyes had fallen just below the waistline of her jeans. They flicked back up as soon as he realized he was staring. It was an adequate distraction from noticing the direction they were going in because when she yanked him down onto the couch, his breath caught in his throat. Once again, she was grinning down at him as she situated herself in his laps. Legs splayed out over his hips, bent at the knee on either side of him. Her hands pressed cool against the sides of his neck. Up close, she looked a little tired. Like she hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in weeks. There were freckles spattered across the bridge of her nose and the tops of her cheeks. Her teeth shined bright white against the red lipstick. “Listen, dude, I came here looking for weed, but I guess I’m getting a good time instead.”

Her lips were softer than he thought they would be. They tasted like blueberries and a liquor he couldn’t put a name to at the moment. She had kissed him before he had been ready, so he was sure a shocked yelp came out of his throat. Based upon the chuckle that left her, she heard it as well. The second he eased into her, though, he felt his heart hammer against his chest. Not nervous as it had been before. Instead, there was some sort of excitement in his gut. The music and the smoke and the chatter all seemed to melt away. She pulled one of the hands from his side to rest on her waist. The other didn’t need any help to find itself tangled in her hair.

She smiled into his mouth. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a good kisser, sad bathroom boy?” she mumbled between kisses. As a matter of fact, no one had given him that particular compliment. Not that there were that many people who would have been able to give input. He could count on one hand how many lips he had kissed, and it was just hitting four at that moment. Although, in all honesty, he hadn’t had as much fun with any of those pairs of lips as he was with her. At least in his drunken state this was the case. Maybe it was just the adrenaline of it all. Who knows? He couldn’t even see Jess’s face behind his eyelids as he kissed the girl from the bathroom, though, so that was definitely something.

Fingers threaded through his hair. “No,” was all he could answer before her tongue was snaking into his mouth. This was not something plain old Paul did. He didn’t make out with strangers, much less make out with strangers in front of a room full of people he kind of knew. Between the cheap tequila and her tugging ever so lightly at his hair, he was sure his chest was going to explode. With a fluid motion, she moved his hand from her waist to her ass. The one he had inadvertently found himself staring at. The one that he had to admit looked mighty good in those jeans.

Someone beneath the hum of the music and the blood rushing in his ears called his name. Normally, he might have broken away to see what they wanted, but the punch he had been consuming in the bathroom was hitting him hard. If there was an issue, he’d just tell whoever it was in the morning that he was hammered, which he wasn’t. A little drunk maybe, but nothing sloppy. Her teeth dragged across his bottom lip, eliciting a small groan from him. She pulled back with a more dazed smile on her face this time around. “Hey, so this might sound crazy, but I live upstairs. Do you wanna… y’know?”

His eyebrows shot up, eyes going wide. “Oh!” he sputtered. Was she inviting him up to do what he thought might be implied? Maybe this was the part where she murdered him. He had seen a movie with poison lipstick once. Or there was that episode of  _ Firefly _ with that lipstick laced with that toxin. His hand was still on her ass, but he felt frozen. He blinked up at her. “Uh… sure. Yeah, okay.” It was not the answer he had formed in his head. There were definitely more questions involved, but as it was, his drunk filter really boiled it down for him.

She tossed her head back with a laugh. He liked the way she laughed. It was almost musical in a way. Like a song he hadn’t heard in a long time. “Fuckin’ sick, dude,” she shouted as she hopped off his lap. Both hands reached out to grab his and pull him out of his seat. “I’ve got good liquor up there, so don’t worry. These guys have great weed but shitty,  _ shitty _ booze.” She took his hand again to lead him back through the swarm of people. It almost felt second nature, but maybe that was because he was drunk. Not drunk enough to just be used to someone, though.

Once again, his name was shouted. This time, he glanced over his shoulder to find Jess and Lucas both staring at him completely confused. He raised his free hand. “Hey, Jess,” he hollered back before looking back at the tiny brunette who was leading him out of the party. He didn’t know her name or anything about her aside from the fact that she lived in the same building as the party hosts, but there was a little excitement in that. Somewhere between the living room and the door, her fingers had laced with his. His heart leapt against his ribs.

The last thing he could hear over  _ Turn to Stone  _ by Electric Light Orchestra was Ted absolutely screaming: “Fuck yeah! That’s my boy, Paul, over there!” Then the door shut behind them, leaving nothing but muffled remnants of the party to play out behind them.


	2. Advanced Tomfuckery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma brings sad bathroom Paul upstairs to her place to continue to the party in private.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH OMFG. I AM SO OVERWHELMED AND AM SO GLAD YOU'RE ALL SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS. HOLY COW.
> 
> Also I appreciate your comments so much and lsagj;sdklgjalsdgjka I have no words :') It's late here, so I'll have to reply in the morning. But oh man, you all are so lovely.

The building, as explained by the mystery girl, was old and strangely designed. Maybe it was less designed in an odd way so much as it had been renovated in such a manner. There was the apartment a couple floors down, which they had just been in, that was nearly the entire floor of the building. Sizable. More than spacious enough for a few roommates. The floor above that was divided into two different apartments. One single bedroom. The other with two. Small but manageable, but getting up to her floor the space had been divided into three studio apartments. It felt like a Winchester Mansion of an apartment building. Nothing seemed to make sense, yet the building did very much exist. 

Her place was small and dark when they walked in. Immediately he noticed the dozens of plants lining shelves and the large open window panes. When she switched on a string of what looked like paper lanterns that hung along where the walls met the ceiling on one side of the apartment, he could see that each and every plant was thriving. Green and lush. God, Paul’s mother could barely keep a plant that was allegedly okay with a little neglect. Let alone this much greenery. “Make yourself at home,” she hummed as she strode across the small space.

At the far end of the room, her mattress sat on the ground beneath a mess of light colored blankets. She kicked off her sneakers before turning her attention to something on the small bookshelf beside her bed. His eyes wandered around the studio. Papers and canvases covered the walls. Half-finished paintings and sketches littered the space. Animals. Landscapes. People. Plants. He was almost able to make out each thing that was in a state of being unfinished. One time Jess drew a shitty flower on his calc notes as they listened to a lecture. He erased it when he got back to his dorm that night.

Light guitar strumming filled the air as a light breeze passed through her open window. He could just see the fire escape she had used to sneak into the party behind the slightly obstructed glass. “You listen to Nick Drake, sad boy Paul?” she wondered as she spun around to face him. His eyebrows shot up, unsure of how she would have known his name. A smirk cracked along her lips. “Everyone and their fucking mother was shouting your name down there. Being horny doesn’t make you deaf, dude.”

A flush burned at his cheeks. Of course. There had been people calling his name. It made sense she would have heard that and picked up that they were likely talking to him. Especially when he had said hi to Jess. He wasn’t even sure why he did that. There had been a split second where he hadn’t even been thinking about her. He hadn’t even remembered she was there. In a matter of ten minutes he had gone from feeling like vomiting on a cracked bathroom floor over her to feeling his mind drift far away. “Um, no,” he answered. “I… haven’t.”

She clicked her tongue, reaching back behind her head to pull her hair out of the half bun it had been in. If he hadn’t still been reeling over everything that had just happened, he might have felt dizzy. She was a pretty girl. Even with her makeup smudged and lit up by dim lighting. As it was, he couldn’t really stop thinking about her kissing the ever loving fuck out of him on that shitty uncomfortable couch. “You should,” she replied with a grin. She strode across the space with an air of confidence he couldn’t quite grasp. A bounce was in her step like she was walking on air. Lifting herself up onto the small kitchen counter on the opposite side of the room from her bed, she stared in his direction. “So what’s your deal, bathroom boy? How does a strapping lad like you find himself at a pot dealer’s party?”

“Um, I didn’t even want to go,” was the first thing that left his mouth. Was it the truth? Yes, he didn’t like parties and was planning on wallowing into a bag of peanut butter cups that night. Was it the smart answer to give her? Absolutely fucking not. “Ted wanted to have a wingman, so he dragged me along and then ditched me.” There was the real explanation. One that was usually the case, but having Jess around had been a good excuse to make Ted fly solo.

Another hum in response while she nodded at her newfound information. “I’m assuming Ted’s your buddy who was the surprise guest DJ,” she guessed. For a moment, he almost said that Ted wasn’t his buddy. It had been a long time that he fought Ted’s friendship. Mostly because he was a fucking asshole, but there was something about him that made Paul keep him around. Maybe it was the sheer entertainment value of having the village idiot as a friend. His mouth snapped shut as he muttered some sort of affirmation. “So Paul and Ted walk into a party, and Paul’s ex-girlfriend is there. So Paul hides himself in a bathroom.” His heart sank at the thought of walking through the door to find Jess hanging off of Lucas fucking Doyle’s arm. “Then he makes out with a hot stranger, who then takes him home.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, the realization of what she had brought him up there for was hitting him, and he was instantly nervous. “Sounds like the start of an episode of  _ Law & Order.” _

Despite his anxiousness, a smile broke out on his face. “So you  _ are _ going to kill me,” he shot back without even thinking. She barked out a laugh. “Because I was pretty sure when you climbed through that window that you were going to murder me.”

“I still might,” she warned him, but the smile she gave him definitely said she wasn’t going to do anything like that. He didn’t even know what this girl’s name was, but he liked her immediately. Even if he never saw her again, this was a night that he wasn’t going to forget any time soon. “Don’t think because I’m small means I won’t kick your ass.” She leaned back toward the counter on the balls of her hands. “Not that I’d want to, though. It’s a nice ass. Soccer?”

He blinked a moment, unsure as to why the sport was posed as a question. Then, his eyebrows shot up. “Oh, no,” he said while pulling his hands from his pockets to rub against the thighs of his jeans. “Um… tennis.” It was the one sport he found himself able to play. All of his brothers were gifted athletes. Varsity everything. Lacrosse. Football. Soccer. Wrestling. Baseball. Any sport that could be played in high school, one of his brothers probably played it at some point. That really put a damper on any relationship he was going to have with his parents. They valued the very shallow surface level accomplishments. It was easy to show off a talented athlete. Less exciting and more difficult to talk about their math nerd boy. Tennis came in an oddly natural way for him. Something about having a net in the middle of the playing field seemed to do him well. Badminton. Pickleball. Ping Pong. Volleyball. Tennis. They were all things he excelled at that his brothers didn’t. He even landed a tennis scholarship upon applying to schools. 

She arched a brow. “Oh, so your folks are rich?” she asked simply.

“What makes you say that?”

“Tennis is a rich kid sport. That’s how it was where I grew up at least.”

“Well…” The response died on his lips. She wasn’t wrong. In fact, she had hit the nail on the head. Every time he returned home from school, he rounded into the Pinebrook neighborhood and pulled his shiny little Prius into the long driveway of a bigass house with a bigass yard. His father was old money. A long standing family in the railroad business. The Matthews family had been in Hatchetfield for what seemed like forever. The wealth accumulated and passed down generation after generation. And there  _ he _ was drinking cheap tequila and feeling sorry for himself. This wasn’t something he wanted to get into with someone he didn’t really know, though, so his eyes darted around to desperately find a change in conversation. “So do you… um… did you do these?”

A hand shot out to gesture toward the walls. Her eyes followed, and she shrugged. “Yeah, this isn’t the good stuff, though,” she told him, eyes finding their way back to him. Something about the way she looked at him made him want to squirm and melt into a puddle all at once. It was probably a combination of the booze and the half chub he had wandered out of the party sporting. “All of my good shit is back drying over at River Dell.”

That was the fine arts school within Silver Oak University. He passed that building everyday on his way to and from class. “You go to SOU?” he asked, receiving a nod as his confirmation. “Same.”

“Oh no, sad boy Paul, are you thinking about backing out on me because we might run into each other again someday?” she teased. Teeth peeked out to bite down on her bottom lip as she beamed over at him. The scene made him think for just a moment he wasn’t halfway drunk from shitty booze. That he was just there visiting his friend. Or the girl he liked to fool around with. Or just some girl he could just shoot the shit with. Participate in some absolute tomfuckery of a conversation and be content with it. “Not that we have to do anything. Y’know…” Her hands waved around in front of her like she was trying to mix together her words. “Consent is sexy or whatever the fuck. It’s important we’re both down to clown, y’know?”

Fire burned over his face. He must have been beet red at that point. “No, no, I get it,” he assured her. He reached up and rubbed a hand along the back of his neck. “I just don’t really… do stuff like this?” The last person he slept with broke up with him the day after they last boned. He suddenly wanted to look anywhere but at her. His eyes decided on a profile portrait of a woman. Young. Pretty. Pointed nose and green eyes. A shock of dark roots contrasting with light hair. “I don’t even know your name or--”

“Emma,” she interjected.

He stared at her. “What?”

“I’m Emma,” she repeated.

“But I still don’t know anything about you.”

“That’s not true,” she argued. “You know I go to Silver Oak and that I’m a fine arts major.” That was something he hadn’t assumed, but he was strangely happy to have the nugget of information. “You  _ also _ know where I live and that I buy weed from the guy downstairs.”

A reply was about to come out of his mouth when something brushed by his legs, nearly sending him out of his skin. With a gasp, he jumped out of the way only to find a ball of calico fluff sneaking by him. “Jesus H. Christ,” he muttered, glancing back over to her. “You have a cat?”

“Oh yeah,” she mused, hopping off the counter. Within a second, she was next to him and bending down to run a hand over the cat’s back. “She just showed up one day and never left.” Somehow that made sense. Even though he barely knew this girl, the fact that a cat showed up on her doorstep only to have her take it in seemed to be par for course. The cat rubbed a face against his leg once more, purring happily. “She likes you.”

He joined her in crouching on the ground to hold a hand out to the cat. After a brief sniff, the soft fluffy head that had just been rubbing against his leg was contentedly in the palm of his hand. Bright green eyes peeked up at him. The cat softly mewed, moving to have his hand run over her back like Emma’s had before. “Does she have a name?” he questioned as he scratched under the cat’s chin with a small smile.

She reached out and played with the tiny bell attached to the cat’s collar. “Yeah, of course. I’m not gonna let my cat walk around here without a fucking name. She’s a lady of grace and dignity,” she explained while the cat pushed over toward her. “This is Miss Janis, and she’s a bad bitch.” She grinned down at Janis. “Isn’t that right? You’re Mama’s little badass motherfucker. Yeah, you killed the shit out of that mouse the other day.”

His gaze had wandered back over to her. If he had just run into her on campus, he wasn’t sure he would have pegged her as going home to a cat who was her mama’s little bad bitch. Her curls were wild when they were out of the hair tie that had been holding them back. A small mane of dark hair cropped into a bob. He fought the urge to reach out and tuck a strand behind her ear. Eyes raised to his, and his heart felt like it stopped in his chest. “Uh, hey,” he spat out.

“Hey, yourself,” she replied. It was like time had halted for a moment. Like he could just step out of his body to look in on this interaction as it happened. He wasn’t one to get drunk all the time, but that wasn’t to say it hadn’t happened before. However, whatever the fuck was in that punch was fucking him up big time. Not that he was fully mad about it. She leaned in toward him and brushed her lips up against his once more. Gentle this time around. Barely there. As if she breathed the kiss right onto his mouth. His breath hitched in his throat. “You want to just sit here petting my cat or did you want to fuck around a little bit?”

Her lips continued to touch his as she spoke. His eyes slid open to find her staring right back at him. There was something that came off as warm and inviting in the deep earth that peered out to him. “I… uh… could get into fucking around,” he decided on despite this not falling in line with anything he would ever do on a regular day. He was a play it safe kind of guy. Going out of his routine drove him nuts. When he didn’t turn in assignments early given the option to do so, he was thrown into a pit of anxiety. He had dated the same shiny pretty girl for so long even though she apparently was miserable the whole time just because it was comfortable. Well, and he thought things were good and that they were happy.

She rose to her feet, pulling him up with her. Arms wound around his neck to guide him back down to her. Their lips met fully. It was a kiss that was oddly comfortable and welcoming. Open with a little hint of joy. One of his hands rested on her cheek to pull her deeper into the kiss, but she pulled away from him. A wicked smirk was on her lips again. “You know what they say about big hands, right?” she cooed, eyes flickering with a hint of a fire he hadn’t seen in a long time. Maybe ever.

Another kiss passed between them. “Big gloves?” he offered, knowing full well what she was going for. Once more, she broke away from him to laugh and smack his chest as though this was something they did all the time. Like they were standing in her kitchen on a normal Saturday night just fucking around. “What?” She pushed off of him to saunter back across the studio. “ _ What?” _

Without stopping her movements, she turned around to face him again. In the soft light from the string lights, she looked like someone out of a movie scene. Like this was all produced and not real. Her steps ceased for a moment before her arms reached around her body to pull the barely there tank top off, which was promptly tossed across the room at him. “Come and get me, asshole,” she responded with a sideways grin. When he began to move toward her, she jabbed one finger in his direction. “Shirt off, though.” He wasn’t really in a place to argue, so he complied quickly. The pale red henley fell in a pile by his feet. She jutted her chin out toward him. “Shoes, too.” Sighing, he toed his shoes off, regretting the choice of sneakers as they were a little more difficult to smoothly get off than he would have liked. He let out a grumble as he knelt to the ground to actually untie his shoes so he could kick them off to the side. “Alright, bathroom boy. Turn around.”

“Really?” he sighed, turning around so he was facing away from her.

“Mhm, yeah, okay,” she hummed. Quiet wrapped the room along with the crooning of Nick Drake. For a moment, he wondered what she was doing. If she was just standing there. What her plan was. A pair of arms wrapped around his middle. Fingers trailed down his stomach. Feather light touches. “Just as I thought.” They lingered at the buckle of his belt, tapping lightly. Teasing. “Pretty fucking good under those clothes.”

“Did I have to turn around for that?”

“Nah, I just wanted to get a good look at your ass. It’s pretty nice.”

He turned around, still wrapped up in her arms. She peered up at him with a smug grin before looking back down to actually work at his belt. “You always compliment guys you bring home from your shitty pot guy’s parties this much?” he questioned, words coming out a little breathless. When his belt buckle came open with a light ting, he leaned down to meet her lips again. That same blueberry flavor was still lingering in her mouth. He smiled again between kisses. Her tongue pushed through into his mouth. No more fucking around.

Legs hopped off the floor to wrap around his waist. While catching her caught him off guard, she was light. Not shocking. Carrying her over to her bed wasn’t a challenge. Neither was falling into the bed beside her. She pushed him onto his back, finding her straddling his hips again. This time with far less shirt in the way and far less onlookers to keep tabs on them. “I really don’t bring too many people home,” she admitted, hands reaching behind her to fiddle with the clasp of her bra. “Especially people I don’t know.” The bra went flying across the floor. Maybe it was because he had been dumped and fucking down on himself, but seeing her topless and staring down at him with a hunger in her eyes had him reeling. “But I figured if I’m going to get murdered tonight, I kind of wanted to see you without your shirt on first.”

No other words passed between them before she crushed her lips against his own. Teeth and lips and tongues. He couldn’t remember being so excited about a kiss. Or really feeling so much anticipation about getting laid. It was very possible that he was just feeling the tequila still flowing through his veins. Her hips ground against his. This time without her guidance, he clapped a hand down against her ass. The bare skin of her chest brushed up against his. Warm and soft and vanilla scented. His heart was going to beat right through his ribcage. He was sure of it.

With one of her hands working at the button of his jeans, he thought if there was a time he was going to be murdered this would be the best way to go.


	3. Mouths 101

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which, Paul Matthews fucks and Emma Perkins is snarky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ONCE AGAIN, I AM SO STOKED Y'ALL ARE INTO THIS. I'm so excited that you're all as excited as I am holy crap.
> 
> Also things get a lil sexy but it's nothing terribly explicit. Just enough to get the point across that our boy, Paul Matthews, in fact, fucks.

Jess wasn’t super fond of a lot of things that Paul did. Whether it was rattling off something about a show he was watching on TV or things here or there in bed, she hadn’t been afraid to tell him to cut the shit when she wasn’t into it. Often were the times she wasn’t into it. They usually would watch what she wanted to watch even though he wasn’t  _ super _ into  _ the Bachelor _ or  _ Friends. _ In fact, he hated the latter, but usually, they would end up getting into something on the couch. So it wasn’t  _ always _ a total waste of time.

He was not an adventurous person. He liked what he liked. He did what he did. And that was it. There wasn’t much stepping out of line or thinking out of the box. Quite frankly, he liked it that way. It was easy to know what to expect. Sex with Jess had fallen into a pretty standard rhythm. Some kissing, soft and first before someone’s tongue slipped in. A gradual removal of each other’s clothes. Quiet touches to skin with a slight foreplay. Then it was time to do the deed and be done. There had been a time or two where he had attempted to go off script specifically to wander somewhere between her thighs, but each time had ended with her offhandedly saying how she didn’t like that so much.

This girl, on the other hand, was down for pretty much anything so far, which was an oddly satisfying change of pace. He didn’t like changes of pace, but so far, he was thoroughly enjoying the ones he was having with her. Granted, it had only been a matter of hours that he’d been experiencing them. She was refreshing, this Emma who had rescued him from getting black out drunk and probably embarrassing himself in front of everyone so bad even Ted couldn’t defend him. Well, he could have very well made a fool of himself outside of the party as well, but he sure hoped he wasn’t reading things the wrong way. 

“Jesus,  _ fuck,” _ she gasped with fingers raking through his hair, pulling just slightly. Her legs tightened around his shoulders and hips bucked up off the mattress. One of his hands splayed out across her stomach while the other remained grounded at her hip. He glanced up at her, eyes dragging up over her body all the way to her face, which was thrown back against her pillows. This certainly wasn’t where he thought his night was going. The grip on his hair tightened. A strangled noise that vaguely sounded like his name left her lips and then faded into a gasping moan. “Paul,  _ goddamn _ .” He had never been more thankful for Ted having a bigass fucking mouth that liked to shout at him from across a room.

Fingers untangled from his hair and tugged his face up. Her legs loosened from around his back. He rested his head against the inside of her thigh. “Was that okay?” he asked. A genuine question. He wasn’t one to ask for feedback normally, but he also wasn’t one to garner a reaction like  _ that. _ His curiosity was getting the better of him. Jess’s friends liked to harp on the fact that faking it with a dude was easy as all get out, so he couldn’t help but wonder if this was just an exaggerated show. Her hands were still on his cheeks as she stared down at him, a little flushed and perplexed by his question. She arched a brow. “What?”

She threw her head back against her pillows, her hands moving to cover her face. “Jesus Christ, dude,” she groaned. At some point, his thumb had begun to quietly stroke her stomach. A motion that he hadn’t even thought about and still wasn’t entirely. Everything felt like it was fogged over with some sort of haze. A small smile fell onto his lips. She peeked out between her fingers before dragging her hands down her face to reveal her own grin. “Yes, it was fucking  _ good.” _ Compliments in bed didn’t happen for him usually. At the same time, he wasn’t entirely used to having sex with the lights on either, so maybe actually seeing her was giving him some sort of courage to ask. “What? Has no one told you that before?”

He shrugged. “I guess not,” he admitted. What he meant to say was that he hadn’t. Not that he had asked, though. It was normally a lot of groping and probing in the dark. Hands and limbs would be everywhere. Reaching out to grasp onto something. Anything really. Only to end as quickly as it began. Even if the sex was nothing to write home about, it had always been nice to curl up next to a warm body at night. Even if it was dark. Even if there were no laughs or chatter between them. The previous weeks, he had found himself missing Jess quite a bit.

When he came out of his thoughts, he found her watching him with a strange look in her eyes. One he couldn’t quite place. His thumb ceased its movement. “What?” he hummed, though it came out as more of a whisper. Eyes continued to study him. Glazed and somewhat more serious. A quiet concentration. “Emma?” She reached down to grab the hand still spread over her stomach to pull him back up. He happily complied.

Their lips met again. Each time felt like a jolt of excitement was passing through him. Like the anxious adrenaline that had shot through him down at the party. Every single kiss felt like a static shock. She pulled back from him just enough to look at him. A hand laid against his cheek. Eyes scanned over his face like she was trying to take note of every freckle and line that his skin held. “I can’t believe that girl dumped you when you fuck like  _ that,” _ she said with no tone of joking in her voice. His eyes fell from hers briefly as he let out a soft chuckle. “I’m being fucking serious, man.” He collapsed on his side onto the bed beside her even if it was only a pit stop before being asked to leave.

Her sheets smelled like she did. Spices and vanilla with a hint of tobacco as though she had given up smoking and there were just whispers of it left in her pillows. He watched her grin dreamily up at the ceiling with one eye open. Sleep was creeping up on him. Between the tomfoolery and the alcohol, the time of night was really catching up on him. If he didn’t have a better idea of what this night was supposed to be, he might have let his eyes slide shut, but he knew better. Well, maybe he didn’t know personally. He was just aware that shit like this always ended in splitting before the morning. Usually not even getting to sleep. 

She turned her head to face him. “You tired, sad boy?” she wondered. Her voice had grown soft with sleep. A little more tender than she sounded before. Less harsh and blunt. It felt like a gentle private moment he shouldn’t have been looking in on. Like two people who had known each other for years whispering adorations back and forth. She yawned, loud and open. “You could spend the night… if you want.”

He blinked, suddenly feeling more awake than he had before. That wasn’t a statement he had been anticipating. Obviously. His eyebrows shot up. “Are you sure?” he questioned before he was able to stop himself. What a fucking idiot. Of course she was just being nice and offering that out of pity. He had been drunk and recently dumped, both of which she was aware of. This was just out of the kindness of her heart for some sad sack she met in a bathroom.

Once more, her eyes trailed over his face. The corners of her mouth remained turned upward. “Yeah,” she reassured him. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he sucked in and held. There was no reason for him to be as nervous as he was. He was still heartbroken over Jess… just caught up in this moment. In a moment of closeness. “I can get into some cuddling after the best orgasm I’ve ever had.” His eyes went wide. Another laugh left her, drifting through the cool quiet air of her studio like the music from earlier that had long since stopped. “Consider it a compliment, my guy.”

He joined in her laughter. “I absolutely do,” he chuckled.

“Good,” she stated, turning onto her side. On her back was another small tattoo right between her shoulder blades. A small gold crown. Simple and just about the size of a Snapple bottle cap. He wasn’t able to resist running his fingers down along her spine. It was a motion that felt like his thumb earlier. Like it was something second nature. “You gonna spoon me or what, bro?”

He found himself smiling again as he moved to press himself up against her. “Do you call every guy who eats you out ‘bro’?” he mused with his face buried into her back of her neck. His arm wrapped loosely around her middle but was quickly moved. Her fingers intertwined with his, her palm pressed against the back of his hand. They rested just over her chest. He could feel her heart pounding against her ribs. Was  _ she _ nervous?

“Nope, just you, sport,” she jabbed back while scooting closer to him. Not that she could really be much closer. Honestly, it seemed like she was doing it just to rub her ass up against him. He sucked a sharp breath in. The wicked grin on her face was practically palpable. “I figured maybe I could buy you breakfast in the morning. For a job well done.” 

Pausing for a moment, he hovered over the skin of her neck. It was as though he was a kid with his hand over a big red button he was told not to push. Nervous and excited all at once. Softly, he laid a kiss against her neck. In response, she leaned her head further into her pillow to grant him better access to her skin. “So now you’re paying me for my services?” he continued to play into her bit. They would likely go their separate ways. He peppered kisses down her neck and along her shoulder, hoping they were leaving little sparks like they left with him. Though she hadn’t been nearly as drunk as him. She might not have been drunk at all.

“Hey, Google,” she interjected, cutting through the current conversation. “Lights out.” With a little chime. The string of lights powered down, leaving them with nothing but the blue glow of the moon outside. She flipped onto her back to look up at him. “I just want to take you out to breakfast, dude.” The whisper of a smile was still on her lips as she gazed up at him. Moonlight cut across her face with the shadows of her curtains playing along with the light. Had his head been in a different place and not slightly filled with cotton and regret about so many things, he might have fallen in love with her at that moment. “That’s all.”

He furrowed his brows. “Like on a date?” he asked. His face pinched. Not that he wouldn’t have been flattered by a pretty girl asking him out on a date. By a beautiful girl even taking interest in him like she had. Things were just… weird. Everything felt a little screwy and out of sorts, and there was this itty bitty part of him that thought maybe, just maybe, things could end up working out with Jess.

This time, her eyebrows shot up. “It doesn’t have to be a date,” she insisted. A hand reached up to push his hair back off his forehead. A simple gesture but one that felt oddly intimate. There had been so many various touches at various parts of both of their bodies, but this moment felt the most intimate of them all. Quiet gazes in the moonlight. Her fingers lingering at his temple. The cool air coming through her open window sent a chill down his spine. “It could be two people, who are attracted to each other, just sharing some bacon and fucking eggs while they get to know each other.”

A smirk passed over his features. “That sounds suspiciously like a date,” he told her. Her eyes shifted away from his while she exhaled a light laugh. He sucked in a breath. “I just don’t know if I’m ready to do--”

“How about friends then?” she offered. All thoughts of anything else halted in his brain. She really wanted to keep him around for whatever reason, pulling out anything she could muster up to just convince him to come to breakfast with her. A playful smile played on her lips, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. Something in his chest told him to just give it up and fall into whatever was coming at him. However, his brain was telling him no. Telling him to turn around in order to try and fix what was already shattered. “Just a couple of friends, who may or may not fuck on occasion…  _ allegedly.” _ He couldn’t help but laugh. Her palm landed lightly at his cheek. Without a second thought, he leaned into her touch. “Because you’re a damn good lay, and I’d like to do this again sometime.”

He considered the option she had offered up. This was a person he could see himself enjoying the company of. He had already involuntarily pictured coming over on a Friday night to just eat pizza and shoot the shit with her. Ranting about their weeks. About class and stupid people. He really wanted to hear about her art projects and wasn’t fully sure why that was. He could use a friend who didn’t play tennis and wasn’t Ted. “Friends with benefits never work out well, though,” he challenged. Why was he arguing with her? He wanted to be around her, but he was pushing back despite the dancing heart in his chest.

“Not with that attitude they don’t,” she deadpanned.

Leaning down, he pressed a kiss against her lips. When he did, he swore he could almost taste the silver light of the moon off of them. “Okay, well,” he began but was cut off with another kiss. “I’d love to get breakfast with my new very attractive friend, Emma.” He could feel her smile into his mouth. The grin was contagious. As they kissed, teeth clattered together slightly. His hand found her hip to pull her closer to him. “And you  _ are _ very beautiful.”

She backed away from him, falling against the pillows once more. “Pfft, you’re just saying that because you totally have a boner right now,” she scoffed. He opened his mouth to argue with her again. “Don’t fucking deny it. It’s  _ right _ there. You can’t fucking miss it!”

“Okay,  _ maybe _ I said it out loud because of that,” he admitted. “But the point still stands.” She was very beautiful. He wasn’t lying about that just because she rubbed her ass all up on his crotch and got him going again. Objectively, she was a pretty girl. Sharp and small with a head of curls. Hips and ass for days. And there was just this air about her. That he couldn’t quite name. Something almost magnetic. That could draw people in from miles away. Like moths to a porch light on a hot July night. She pulled him down to her lips again. Unlike the moths and the lights, he got to enjoy her warmth. Like a campfire on a cool autumn night. Beautiful and comforting but also a little dangerous. “But no bacon and eggs, though.”

“Oh no?” she hummed against his lips. He did like the way she kissed him. Gentle at times. Hungry in other moments. Talking straight into his mouth, not wanting to pull away. His heart stirred to think that maybe she just wanted to be close to him and not entirely because she was horny. “Then what’re you going to eat, Paul?” 

Her tone was teasing. Trying to seduce a particular kind of answer out of him. She bit down on his lower lip, dragging her teeth along the flesh. A throaty grunt left him without him being able to stop it. “Chocolate chip pancakes,” he informed her between kisses and tongues dipping into mouths.

She stopped dead in her tracks. “Chocolate chip pancakes?” she guffawed. “Are you twelve?”

“No, chocolate chip pancakes are delicious and wonderful,” he argued. “There’s nothing wrong with getting them for breakfast. It’s pretty normal actually.”

“Yeah, if you’re a fucking  _ child,” _ she spat back at him. She was still pulled up against him. One of her legs rode up over his hip. She was soft and warm and small next to him, yet he felt like he was completely at her mercy. 

“Well, if I’m a child, then I guess I am a  _ fucking _ child.” He stared at her with an open mouthed grin. She tossed her head back, groaning but smiling no less. 

“Jesus fucking Christ,” she muttered, pulling him back in for another kiss. Like the excitement of opening gifts on Christmas morning. “I take it back. I don’t want to be your friend. You’re a fucking nerd.”

“Are you still going to buy me chocolate chip pancakes?”

“No, just because you’re being an ass.”

“Can I make it up to you?”

With an arched brow, she trailed a finger down the center of his chest. Her eyes never left his, an intensity adding to her already natural magnetism. “I think of a way or two you could do that,” she concurred, voice growing low. “You might even make it back into the friend zone.”

A slow tantalizing kiss laid out against her lips. Behind his eyelids, he fought back the images of a life that didn’t exist. Of lazily hanging around her apartment. Hiding off at the far corner of the library together. Tucking themselves away in his bedroom at his parents’ house to get a minute from his less than likable family. “Good,” he mumbled into her mouth. “Because I’m really in the mood for pancakes.”

“In the mood for something else, too, by the looks of it.”

Oh, he liked this new friend and the less than conventional friendship they were about to embark on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I'd like to remind you all of one thing and one thing only:
> 
> P A U L M A T T H E W S F U C K S.


	4. Pancakes: A Concept

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma and Paul get breakfast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish I had more to say than thank you, but that's all my dead brain has got today!
> 
> I'm so happy you guys are liking this!
> 
> (also I promise to respond to comments tomorrow. it's late here and ya girl's gotta get up at 5 AM for work tomorrow!)

The diner just off campus was a popular spot on a Sunday morning. Every half awake, still half drunk college kid within a ten mile radius would show up at some point between ten AM and three PM to scarf down some mediocre food that was cooked in concerning amounts of butter. It wasn’t anything special. The food on a good day was okay, but it was cheap and always did the trick for a hangover. Nothing said settling a stomach like a mound of greasy bacon and a pile of eggs, usually fried.

They slid into a booth not too far from the entrance. The red pleather upholstery was cracking and chipping away in chunks. At the corner of the table, there was some sort of carving into the wood beneath the chipping brown paint. Paul wasn’t going to crane his neck to see what it was, though. With all the tequila out of his system, he was feeling both terribly ill and bashful all at the same time. He aimlessly picked at the material of his seat as his eyes flicked between the menu, splattered with what he hoped was egg yolk, and his companion across the table.

True to her word, Emma did take him out for breakfast, and she was fully intent on buying even after he insisted he could pay for himself. Unlike him, she didn’t periodically look up from the menu. In fact, she didn’t look at the menu at all. It sat beside her on the table the entire time, and she immediately went scrolling idly through her phone instead. She had thrown on a sweatshirt that was far too big for her over the same jeans she wore last night. One of the drawstrings from her hood was pinched between her thumb and her forefinger as she bobbed her head up and down.  _ “Ooh, baby, do you know what that’s worth?” _ she mumbled along with Belinda Carlilse, who was playing softly over a set of speakers somewhere in the diner. The eyeliner was gone. Hair was pulled fully back from her face. Lipstick had long since smudged off of her lips, as he learned when he looked at his chest and stomach in the morning. After a panicked makeup wiping session, they had headed to the diner. She glanced up at him. “You good there, twitchy?”

His eyebrows shot up. “Oh! Um… yeah, just looking at the menu,” he blabbered. It wasn’t entirely true or false. He had been  _ kind of _ looking at the menu but also trying to digest the last twelve hours of his life. The thought of Jess the night before had also crept back into his mind. He wondered what she had done after he tumbled out of the party with Emma. If she said anything. If she was even a little upset. He squeezed one eye shut as he looked at Emma. “Also my eyes feel like shit.” She tilted her head to the side, furrowing her brows. “Contacts.”

She arched a brow. “You wear glasses?” He hummed a confirmation while nodding. Her eyes shifted back to her phone. “Interesting.” Fingers tapped away busily at her phone instead of scrolling but only for a moment before she looked back up at him with narrowed eyes. “Was that whole bit with the chocolate chips just so you could get a round two in?”

About to hum another confirming response to her, his eyes shot up to her, wide at her words. “What? No!” he spat out, sending her into a fit of laughter. “No, I was so tired. I was ready to just go to bed.” He lowered his voice, leaning closer to her. “That was  _ you _ who made the moves on me.” His heart fluttered in his chest a moment, thinking about waking up that morning. The sun poured through her large windows. He had squeezed his eyes shut tightly, forgetting for just a moment where he was. The warmth beside him felt good. Normal even. His arms had tightened around her middle, having enveloped her for most of the time they had been sleeping. Without thinking, he had buried his face into her neck like he’d done it every single morning for years. 

She leaned forward on her elbows to sit nose to nose with him. “Paul, you don’t have to whisper,” she whispered back to him. “Look at all the people here.” She gestured to the packed diner. Filled to the brim with pallid exhausted faces. People still in clothes that were clearly rumpled and dirty from the night before. He had to say that his clothes had held up pretty well. It helped that he didn’t have a chance to be in his shirt for all that long. “They’re not going to give even half a fuck about you getting laid last night. They just want to eat something to clog their arteries and take the hangover away.”

His eyes continued to scan across the diner. Several people sat at the bar with their heads in their hands as they pondered the menu. Legs bounced up and down. Lips found coffee mugs. Boy, the Elvis song that was playing over the speakers now probably wasn’t helping any of them, he thought. He looked back to her. “Plus, I’m very serious about chocolate chip pancakes,” he explained. “They’re not a joking matter.”

Pursing her lips, she stared over to hip. She clicked her phone screen off and placed her phone on the table. “You’re fucking weird, you know that?” she mused, a smirk peeking out across her lips. The same one he had seen time and time again the night before. Even without the alcohol, he was finding it hard not to return her smile. “Just a fucking weirdo with a  _ very  _ talented mouth.”

He opened that very mouth to respond to her when he was so rudely cut off. “Paul?” a voice came from behind him. “Hey! Paul!” He turned around to look over his shoulder at who could have been calling him. The long lanky body that was sauntering over to them had him turning right back to her beet red in the face. “Wait. Paul!” An arm was thrown around his shoulders and suddenly the booth was much more cramped with Ted sliding in beside him. “I was worried you fucking died last night, buddy!” The look he gave Emma from underneath Ted’s affection must have looked like he wanted to murder someone because she nearly doubled over trying to keep herself from laughing. “Soooo,” Ted began with a grin just below the mustache Paul had begged him to shave over and over again. “What did you two crazy kids get up to last night? Anything fun?”

Paul was immediately jumping in to answer. “Oh, y’know, nothing really--”

“You know, just some stuff,” she interjected, her head wagging back and forth to the new song that had come on. “Great song, by the way.”

Ted turned his attention to her. “Right?” he replied, clearly in agreement with her observation. Once the chorus hit, Paul recognized the old Carly Simon song. Granted, just repeating ‘you’re so vain’ really made the title evident. He was also relieved that Ted hadn’t asked for specifics but also that she hadn’t willingly given up any specifics. Ted certainly didn’t need the ammunition.

Lifting the glass of water the waitress had brought them upon sitting down at the table, she looked him directly in the eye. The relieved smile that had crossed his face wavered as she took a sip and glanced over at Ted. “Oh, and also your buddy here ate me out like a goddamn fucking champ,” she explained, leaving both boys across the table a little slackjawed. Although, one of them was definitely blushing far more than the other. “Like, last night and also before we got here today.”

Ah yes, there was that bit between waking up and then panicking because he was covered in red lipstick stains. 

A hand clapped against his back hard. “I knew you had it in you, Paul,” Ted commended, glancing between Paul and Emma. “You get a little something in, too, dude?” Ted waggled his eyebrows. “You know… a little…” He gestured with his hand held as if there were something cylindrical in it and lifted to his open mouth. “A little--”

“He sure fuckin’ did.” Emma’s eyes were back on her phone, but Paul could see a little light of amusement shining in them. She was certainly enjoying herself and wasn’t so great at hiding it. “Big dick Paul over here got to nut a whole fucking lot last night.” She brought her gaze back over to him with a lazy smile. “This morning was just for me, though.”

Ted shoved Paul’s shoulder. “I  _ told _ you it was big, man,” he hooted. The more that came out of either one of their mouths, the more Paul wished he could just sink into the crack in the booth. With Jess, this was never an issue because she flat out didn’t like Ted, which was kind of fair. He was crass and loud and, frankly, pretty rude. He didn’t know how to mind his own business and couldn’t be bothered to keep his mouth shut about anything. She was very put off by him, yet here this Emma was playing along with his shit. Though, to be fair, Paul shouldn’t have even been comparing her with Jess. The relationships were not in the same category. 

Back and forth, the two jabbered on. They took jabs at each other and at Paul’s expense, but he hadn’t been fully listening after the big dick Paul comment. The whole thing felt strange. Very much like a bit of deja vu. Like he had been in that exact spot many times before when he most certainly had not. They hadn’t even been in that diner all together before. Hell, neither one of them had met her until the night before. That didn’t detract from the strange feeling of how natural everything was.

Another smack came to his back. Immediately, he glared over at Ted. “Did you hear that, Paul?” Ted bellowed. “Erica here--”

“Emma,” she corrected.

“Whatever.” He waved her off. “Anyway,  _ she’s _ from Hatchetfield, too.”

There was no way. No possible way this creature could be from the tiny island town. How could he have never met her at some point? Suddenly, there was a sense of sadness creeping up from somewhere deep in his gut. Those images of holing away with her he was having the night before were back. Except there were thoughts of flitting around the island with her. Hitting all the weird little spots in town he knew. The large tree just off the beach at Starry Cove. The cool wall in the middle of Witchwood.He wished he could shake them out of his mind honestly, but they were already there. 

“Yeah, a couple of fucking Timberwolves over here.” She grinned at him. Softer than she had been since Ted showed up. A slightly adoring smile. Knowing even. Maybe she was having the same thoughts. Not that she would have those thoughts. It was silly to even consider she would. He didn’t know what the fuck was wrong with him. “We hated you guys.”

“We hated ourselves,” he responded without skipping a beat. Another roll of laughter filled his senses. Like hitting the chorus of his favorite song. A smile hit his lips. He wasn’t even able to stop it. It was just the only response his body could come up with when she was cackling.

“You kids ready to order?” Their waitress was short and stout. Broad shouldered and stocky. On her aqua uniform, there was a nametag that read: Barb. Once upon a time, Barb might have looked like an actual person, but as it was, she seemed more like a caricature of a diner waitress than a real one. Her poorly dyed red hair was tied up into a dryass bun. Deep lines covered her face. Like the rings in an ancient tree, they seemed like they should tell stories, but they did not. The patchy blue eyeshadow that was blended up to her thin eyebrows and the shock of hot pink blush on her cheeks, though, could tell a thousand tales. Her voice was one he might have mistaken for a man’s had he heard it over the phone or without a face to place with it. Yellowed teeth peeked out behind frosted pink lips. From what he could tell, there were flecks of that very lipstick all over her teeth. The bottom line was: this person did not seem like she should be a real human.

“Yes!” Emma chirped, placing her phone flat on the table. “I’ll have two eggs, fried, an order of bacon, and corned beef hash.” The order rattled off her tongue like she had been practicing it. Maybe she had just found the perfect hangover cure for her and had just been there many times before to order just that. “Oh, and a glass of orange juice. Please.”

Barb scribbled down the order on the pad that had been tucked into a pocket on her apron. Beneath a pair of thin reading glasses, the heavily lidded eyes looked over at Paul. “Oh, um, could I get a coffee?” he started.

“You want cream, hun?” Barb asked.

“No, thank you,” he said back to her, wanting to curse himself for the nervous wavering in his voice. “And, um, can I get a short stack of chocolate chip pancakes?” More scribbles came audibly as Barb dotted an I or crossed a T. Wordlessly, she picked up their menus.

“Does your boyfriend want anything?” Barb questioned barely looking back up to Paul.

“Oh, no, lady, we are both  _ tragically _ heterosexual men,” Ted insisted, wrapping an arm around Paul’s shoulders.

Shrugging out of his grasp, Paul felt the scowl hanging heavy over his face. “And he’s got food over there,” he explained as he pointed over to Ted’s empty seat at the bar, where the food sat steaming.

“ _ But _ if my friend’s wanted to treat me to some waffles--”

“What about that plate full of food you have over there that’s getting cold?” the waitress shot back at him. “There’re kids starving in Africa, y’know.” Without giving him another chance to cut in, Barb retreated back toward the kitchen to put their orders in. 

“Did you hear that?” he huffed, crossing his arms. He looked like a small child who had just been told to stop touching something in a store. Like he had been scolded and was put out by it. “What gives her the right--”

“Hey, Ted,” Paul cut in. His friend stopped mid-sentence to look at him incredulously. The end of the world had come by Paul cutting off his needless rants. It was a look Paul was all too familiar with, having known Ted nearly their whole lives. “Can you… go back to… I don’t know. Over there?”

Eyes shifted between Paul and Emma. Slowly. Back and forth. God, if it wasn’t illegal and wouldn’t leave everyone with lasting trauma, he might have killed Ted right then and there. “Paul, I’m wounded,” Ted sighed. “But I’m also a little nervous that bitch might spit in my food.” He scooted out of the booth and nodded at Emma. “Nice to meet you, Ella.”

“Emma.”

“Gesundheit.” He jabbed a finger at Paul. “We’ve got shit to talk about later.”

With that, he was left skulking back to the bar to consume his food that had very likely cooled past its prime consumption point. Paul picked at the corner of the paper placemat. This had all been very uncomfortable and unnecessary but also completely out of his control. “That’s your roommate, isn’t it?” she asked. 

He glanced up to find the smirk was back. He smiled despite himself. “Yeah,” he admitted. “He’s an idiot, but I guess he’s my idiot.”

“You sure he’s not your boyfriend?”

Barb returned and placed their drinks on the table, leaving once again immediately after. “Stop,” he groaned. “We’ve been friends since we were kids, and… I don’t know. At the end of the day, he might be a shit, but he means well I guess.”

Emma hummed into her orange juice. He almost wished they had just stayed at her place to eat. Sitting on her floor eating off of paper plates. Laughing quietly at stupid things. Falling back into her bed sometime after. He also wished he would stop thinking about it. The slightest bit of affection was given, and he just went off building a life where it didn’t fit. “So you’re from good old Hatchetfield, huh?” she returned to the earlier conversation.

Coffee slid down his throat. It was hot still, sitting in the pit of his gut black and warm. He nodded. “Yeah, born and raised,” he told her.

She leaned back against the booth to observe him better. As if she were appraising him. Though, perhaps it wasn’t appraising. Maybe it was just to get a better view of him. To appreciate something, but he couldn’t be sure what that was. “No shit?” she chuckled because she knew it had to be true. No one would just say they were from Hatchetfield. Mostly because it was like a little world within itself. No one really knew offhand about the island. Like it was the Atlantis of the state.

“Yes shit,” he responded, getting a heavier chuckle from her. Now that he was sober and could see her in the full light of day, he could take a moment to appreciate the freckles sprinkled across her nose and cheeks. The lines that formed in the corners of her eyes when she laughed. Her straight white picket fence teeth that were making an appearance to smile at him. He had never felt a grin was ever so focused on him in his life. That there was just a little pocket of happiness being beamed in his direction.

Pulling her legs up underneath her to sit cross legged, she leaned closer to the table again. “I like you, kid,” she announced. His heart skipped a beat. “We should do this again sometime.”

They hadn’t even gotten their food yet, and she was already thinking of the next time.

He smiled.


	5. Intro to Communications

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A week has passed. Paul is sad and sweaty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, guys! I had to take a few days there to let my brain turn off, but we are back! We have so many ideas! Seriously, you should see the notes app on my phone. It's freaking filled.

Paul periodically received texts from her all throughout that next week. After breakfast, they dawdled a bit at the diner. Just chatting about a whole lot of nothing. He found that he enjoyed just shooting the shit with Emma, as he thought he might. She was interesting. There were jokes constantly running through her brain. They would quickly come out in response to things he would say and instantly send him laughing. Every now and then, he even sent a zinger back at her. In the event that he did, a smile would linger on her face after a lull in the conversation came in.

By the time Sunday was halfway through, he knew the very strange weekend was going to have to come to a close. He was ready to call an Uber when she offered to drop him off at his place. An offer he too eagerly took, but she simply smiled and grabbed the keys to a beat up silver Ford Focus. The car itself was cramped and drove like they were constantly on torn up dirt roads, but she drove it with confidence, drumming against the steering wheel to whatever CD by Queen was stuck in her CD player forever, according to her. 

Pulling up to his apartment building felt like a plague was washing over him. He had enjoyed his day for the first time in… a long time really. Letting it come to an end wasn’t something he was really looking to do. However, good things always had to come to an end. It was something that seemed to be at the forefront of his life. He must have given her a pitiful glance because she rolled her eyes with a bit of a smirk. Next thing he knew, he was being pulled down by the collar of his shirt. Their lips met. A spark of excitement hit his gut. She pulled away to sit back up straight in her seat, looking right at him with a grin.  _ “One for the road for my new sad boy friend.” _

He walked into the apartment grinning from ear to ear. Ted hadn't made it back yet, so everything was quiet. There was time for him to stew in the past twenty four hours. The common area of the apartment was neat, if not a little barren. A large black couch in front of a too large TV. A table with several mismatched chairs around it. A set of plates that was incomplete due to someone getting too drunk and dropping them all over the floor. Someone whose name rhymed with shed. Everything was mismatched and a little out of place, but it made sense for a bachelor pad he supposed. 

On and off, though, as he sat at the table rifling through his notes for his vector calculus exam, a message from her would pop up on his screen. Usually, it was a little quip from her day. Something silly she saw that she thought he might have laughed at. Pictures from the internet that made him literally laugh out loud. That would often prompt a snarky comment from Ted that would end in Paul defensively replying,  _ “She’s not my girlfriend!” _ Which was true. She was a girl. And she was his friend. Two very single people who just enjoyed each other's company.

Ted, however, was incessant when they were both at the apartment. Well, he was usually insufferable when Paul started hanging around someone new. Paul was pretty sure that he was jealous but unable to really prove his theory. This particular new person, though, had Paul squirming more than anyone else had.  _ “C’mon, Paul. You fucked her, and you’re  _ still _ talking to her. You like her, and that’s okay, buddy. Sure, she’s a fucking nighthawk, but I can look past that if you  _ really _ like her.” _ Which was where it went grey for him. He did like her. From the time he had spent talking to her, he  _ really _ liked her. He had been laughing harder than he had in months, maybe years. For the first time in weeks, he felt like he was smiling again. Coming around since Jess left. Feeling good about something in his life. It was nice to have a friend like that in his life.

So finally on Saturday night, he escaped Ted’s annoying grasp to the gym. There was no way he was going to another shitty party with Ted because it was very unlikely that Emma was going to climb through another bathroom window to save him from a drunken mental breakdown. Also, he knew that Ted wouldn’t be caught dead at the gym with him, stating that Paul made him look bad (mostly because Ted didn’t put in the effort). After the expected grousing from his roommate, he was able to scoot out the door eventually. 

He didn’t have a car with him at school. At the start of the year, one of his brothers would drive him and help him move in. Usually, it was Jack. The one brother who actually put in the effort to not be a Dick. They were the two youngest and arguably the silver and bronze runners up to their two older golden child brothers. It wasn’t a long painful drive to school with Jack. They could sit in silence happily and chatter on about stupid things. The relationship they had cultivated only really started within the past few years, but Paul was thankful to have someone in his corner at home.

No car, however, meant walking everywhere, which ultimately wasn’t so bad, but was also the reason why he and Ted lived so close to campus. He didn’t have a car, and Ted followed him wherever he went. Thus, he was bound to walk or at Ted’s mercy to go wherever he wanted to drive. The gym on campus, thankfully, was only a half a mile away. Whether or not he would still think so once the colder weather blew in was yet to be seen, but as it was, he enjoyed his strolls to and from the apartment. 

On his walks, he was able to take in the old stone buildings that remained from the original college campus. The main building, MacMillan Hall, looked more like a castle than a place that held college administrative offices and freshman dorms. Faced with beautiful marbled stone and large sprawling windows, he could almost imagine seeing the building in an ancient city as a church. The surrounding buildings looked like they were the bigger one’s beautiful stone children. Smaller versions. One after the other housing shitty hungover and high students while they appeared that they should have been holding royalty or worship.

Some of the newer additions to the campus, though, were very clearly modern buildings. The athletic building, the Clemente Center for Athletics, was one of them. Clean edges. Glass paneled entrance. Everything was rectangular and almost sterile in their way. Not that it maintained that image upon entering. All he could think about after sliding through the entrance was how people could get to college and not understand the importance of deodorant. Such a fancy looking building didn’t seem like it should smell like a seventh grade band concert, yet it did. That was the worst part about escaping to the gym. However, the peace was worth it in the end.

It was meant to be a cardio day. The intention was to do a little cardio circuit. Burpees. Mountain Climbers. Various types of push ups and lunges. Something to break up the monotony a little bit. He didn’t like going to the gym to run. It seemed a little silly when he could just as easily do that out on the street to enjoy the fresh air a bit more. His head that day had been all out of sorts, though, so a run felt like a good way to clear his head a bit. In general, he didn’t run that often because it just made him think of practice, where it seemed like every single punishment was running laps or suicides. 

As he stood at the treadmill, he felt a rush of relief wash over him. Yes, a nice run was what he needed. He had been thinking about Emma for the better part of the day and how he hoped she would invite him over again. The disappointment when she hadn’t was overwhelming. He could feel the nausea rolling around in his gut that he had the weekend before on the pot dealer’s bathroom floor. Like he had let someone down again. Like something about him made someone else not want to be around him.

Bounding away on the track, he could feel himself running away from his inadequacy. That was the way it had been most of his life. He was born into mediocrity and would likely die that way. Everyone who took the time to get to know him eventually realized that and left. Well, except Ted. Ted always stuck around, which was probably why Paul managed to maintain that friendship for so long. As terrible and annoying as the guy could be, he really did care for Paul, and that had to be worth something.  _ “Listen, man, she’s a great girl, but clearly not that fucking great if she could just drop you like that. Paul… you should just be like ‘boom, next’, dude. I’m going to this party tonight. Maybe you could get a little ass or some shit like that. At least you could get fucking wasted with me.” _

That stupid fucking party. He increased his speed to try to escape the thoughts in his head. The party was shitty. There was no denying that. Even Ted admitted it was a bad party with terrible booze and shitty people. But at the same time, he was thankful to have been there. Not only because he had some killer sex, maybe the best he had not that there was much to write home about on that front, but he really genuinely enjoyed the time he spent with that girl in general. He had never felt more comfortable with another person so immediately. It made him wonder what he was doing wrong with Jess. Why things hadn’t been so easy with her.

Ah yes, then there was Jess. The way she had been smiling and laughing made his heart twist up in his chest. She had never looked at him with even a fraction of that happiness. Even on their finest days that were filled with joy and laughter, she never quite exuded the effervescent happiness she had there. Jess was never one to light up a room, but he swore she could have in that moment. That was why he ended up in the bathroom to begin with. Seeing her so full of life made him feel like shit, which, in turn, made him feel even worse because he knew she deserved her own happiness. Even if that didn’t include him.

There was a moment there, though, that he stopped thinking about her. She wasn’t even someone who existed in his mind. Like she had never been there at all. Sitting there on that ratty couch with Emma across his lap, he didn’t think about Jess at all. Just the woman sitting on top of him, sticking her tongue all the way into his mouth. When she had pulled away, he could remember golden flecks in the pools of chocolate that stared down at him. Like there were freckles in her eyes as well as across her nose. He didn’t remember being entranced by it that night until he woke up with her the next morning with the sunlight shining over her skin as though she herself was some sort of golden goddess.

He cranked up the speed on the treadmill. There was no room to be developing feelings for someone. He still had a chance… maybe. He had been sitting in his calc class when Jess had rolled in and sat diagonally behind him.  _ “Hey,” _ she had greeted after unloading a small notebook and her textbook.  _ “It was nice to see you the other night. You looked… happy.” _ It was the first time she talked to him since they had broken up. Not only that, but she had been glad to see him there and happy. That had to mean something. Even so, he had dipped his eyes down as she spoke to read a text from Emma.  _ you ever think about how cottage cheese is just chunky cheese yogurt? _ And he smiled despite himself.

It was strange talking to Emma. Not in a way that made him totally uncomfortable, but in the way that one might feel meeting up with a friend they hadn’t talked to in years. It was new and also felt like they had just been picking back up where they left off somewhere. Also, she had been from the island. Most people had no idea what Hatchetfield was. Once he explained where the island was, most people knew of the location itself, but they still didn’t know the town. There he was a couple hundred miles away from home, though, meeting and promptly sleeping with a girl who was also born and raised on the island. Who felt like an old friend he had never met before. Who made him feel oddly at ease when his mind had been dreadfully dark during the weeks prior.

His chest began to burn, but he pushed on anyway. The feelings were gaining on him. He couldn’t let himself ruin this friendship. He already liked her too much to let himself destroy everything they didn’t even have yet. Maybe if he ran fast enough he would just lose his general sadness and misery that drove everyone else away. At least, that was what Jess said it was that drove a wedge between them. He couldn’t help how he felt, and he  _ was _ working on it. But more often than not, in those quiet moments at the end of the day, he found himself curling inward, wishing he could be like one of those roly-poly bugs and shield himself from the world. It was how he always had been. Ever since he was a little kid. He was working on himself. Trying his best to keep himself on the up and up. Going to appointments. Taking the drugs he was given. Some days were harder than others, though, and that was something he couldn’t stop.

Once the air felt thin around him, he manically pressed the down button for speed. Air heaved its way through his lungs. If he hadn’t known any better, he would have said he was having a panic attack, but he knew this was all his own doing. He should have stopped earlier or at least slowed down. It had just been easier than coming to grips with whatever was or wasn’t going on in his life at that point. His run gradually slowed to a brisk walk as he braced himself against the support bars on either side of the treadmill. Blood rushed through his ears. It felt like he was underwater. His head pounded.

The track slowed down until it came to a stop. He continued to attempt to catch his breath. Had he even been running that long? He didn’t even think to keep track of his speed or duration. Right away, he just went for it. He needed an escape, and there he was paying dearly for it. He felt like his lungs might just come up and out through his mouth he was breathing so hard. Maybe that would have been a better solution than having to deal with what was going on around him.

He backed himself off of the treadmill, grabbing his water bottle and towel that sat on either side of it. The soft white fabric dragged down his face, which was far more drenched than he thought. Maybe he had been running for a long time. His thoughts had the tendency to swallow time whole. It was like going into Target when it was daytime only to leave and find that the sun had long since set. He held the towel there for a moment, taking one more second to just close his eyes. To be somewhere else for a second. All he could focus on, though, was music blasting from one of the rooms he sometimes indulged in yoga classes in. 

With a groan, he dragged the towel the rest of the way down his face. He turned on his heel to walk toward the rooms. Maybe it was someone he vaguely knew from his time there. Maybe it was one of the people from the lady’s tennis team. Either way, he just wanted them to turn down the music a little bit. It was mixing with whatever generic song was playing over the speakers of the gym already and giving him a bigger headache than he had already given himself. 

His feet dragged him across the gym toward the rooms off to the side. He could see one of the yoga classes going on in a room with a closed door. Calm and quiet. Downward dog was clearly happening between more advanced poses. Yoga had been pretty nice for his flexibility, which is what he nonchalantly told Ted when he gave him shit over going to a yoga class. In the next room, however, he found the source of the noise. 

The song wasn’t one he recognized at all. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He could vaguely recognize the tune as being from something his grandmother listened to when he was a kid staying at her house. He moved toward the open door, throwing his towel over his shoulder. Through the window, he could see two women moving around. Dancing maybe. He moved into the doorway with his mouth open ready to shout his request, but it instantly snapped shut.

While he didn’t recognize one of the women, the other was one he definitely knew. Her name almost left his lips, too, but nothing came out. Her body moved along with the music. Smooth and easy. Just as it had the previous weekend. The way she danced was almost like a stream rushing quietly through the earth. Each move was purposeful. Coordinated with whoever she was with. Clearly there was some choreography but each move was so natural it felt like it just flowed right out of her.

He didn’t think that she would be anymore tantalizing with clothes on than she had been without, but he found himself entranced with her. Like she was putting him under some sort of spell. In the large mirror, he could see her grinning from ear to ear as she moved. Every curve on her body seemed to fall into some sort of motion. It was as though the music was entwining with her limbs and wrapping her up in joyful movement. He could have watched her for hours, though when he thought about it that was one of the creepier things he could have been thinking.

So caught up in her, he didn’t notice her friend muttering something that made her turn around. The grin that had been on her lips before seemed to grow at the sight of him. “Are you stalking me, sad bathroom boy?” she chuckled, slightly out of breath. His eyebrows shot up. He thanked god silently that he probably looked sweaty and exhausted, so that could explain away the blush burning across his cheeks. Her own face was flushed but glowing. “Dude, I’m totally kidding.” A beat passed. The music came to a stop, so he supposed his goal had been completed. “But this gym isn’t big enough for the two of us, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to run you out of fucking town.”

Beside her, there was a blonde woman. Slightly taller than she was with an ever so slightly bigger frame. Her face came down into a point. Bright green eyes stared over at him, analyzing him. Dark roots contrasted with the bleached hair. He glanced between her and Emma, just barely recognizing her from one of the paintings on Emma’s wall. “Oh man,” she hollered, turning to Emma. “This is the guy? The one with the mouth!”

Emma turned to her with a brightness in her eyes. “Hell yeah, he is!” she shouted right back. Suddenly, the blasting music didn’t seem like such a bad thing. “You wouldn’t expect it either, right?”

The woman looked back to him, eyes dragging up and down. “No, not at all,” she agreed before looking him directly in the face. “Your head skills apparently rival the best of us, so to that, sir, I give you many fucking kudos.”

His eyes caught Emma’s and something in her gaze softened. “This is Melissa,” she explained, nodding to the woman beside her. “She’s like my Ted but better.”

He raised a hand. “Paul,” was all he could greet with. Hey, it was something. He was feeling so flustered between the movement of Emma’s body between all the skin tight clothes and Melissa hollering about his oral skills that not much else was coming out as a response. 

Before Melissa could cut back in, Emma continued: “Mel, you might if I cut out early?” His heart raced at the implication in her words. It was silly to think she was thinking about leaving early because of him. He shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up. Though, it was a little suspicious given the timing. 

Melissa’s eyes darted between Emma and him. The wicked excitement on her face made him a little nervous. “Mhm, go right ahead,” she hummed, shooting a finger gun in Emma’s direction. “You crazy kids go have some  _ fun.” _

“Shut the fuck up, shithead,” Emma laughed as she bent over to scoop up her bad off the floor. He tried his hardest to not think about how good her butt looked in her leggings. Apparently, his efforts were terrible because Melissa was watching him with waggling eyebrows. Emma looked over her shoulder at her friend. “Lunch on Monday still on?” Melissa nodded with a smile. “Sick. I’ll see you then. Have a good night, Mel.” She strode over to the doorway where he was still standing. Their eyes met and a shockwave went running from his chest to his toes. “Alright, big dick Paul, you down for some ice cream and fucking around?”

He blinked. He hadn’t been anticipating doing anything after the gym. All he brought with him was a pair of sweats and a shitty beat up t-shirt to throw on after a quick shower. Nothing he would have thrown on had he known there would be fucking around  _ and _ ice cream. Regardless, he found himself returning her grin. “Um… yeah. Okay,” he sputtered out. “Yeah, let’s do that.”


	6. Ancient History I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma and Paul get ice cream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think I can express enough how excited I am that you guys are excited for this. I love this AU so much, and it might be my favorite of anything I've written honestly.
> 
> ANYWHO, THANKS FOR READING, FRIENDS! <3 :'D

Around the corner from Emma’s apartment building was a small creamery. A hole in the wall of a little place. Above the window that backed onto the quiet street, a sign glowed softly.  _ Alpine Creamery. _ Paul had gone to this school for nearly four years now and had never heard of this place. According to her, it had been there for nearly forty years, having been established by a father-daughter duo at some point in the eighties. The family owned a dairy farm for generations in a neighboring town and had taken to the art of ice cream making. A small storefront opened up in Albright, and the rest was history.

“That’ll be eight fifty-eight,” a bored teenager announced in the window. A sign on the window alerted him it was a cash only establishment in dark blue handwritten block letters. Beside that sign, there was one that was yellowing at the edges but had a message written in swirling script. Alternating colors between red, yellow, green, and blue. _ Made in house daily. _ He reached down to fish his wallet out of his pocket. Luckily, he was quicker to the draw than she was because he had a ten dollar bill in the young woman’s hand before Emma even had her wallet out.

She narrowed her eyes up at him, slightly annoyed that she hadn’t beaten him to the punch. The girl reached out to hand him his change. “You paid for breakfast,” he stated simply as he dropped the dollar and change he received back into the tip jar before pulling out two more singles to throw in. “I’ll pay for ice cream. It’s only fair.” He had thought about breakfast for the better part of the week. How enjoyable something so mundane was. Even with Ted butting in, he couldn’t remember a better Sunday morning. Things had been so good. Every time it would pop into his head, he smiled the smallest smile to himself.

The girl held out a cone to Emma. Chocolate peanut butter swirl. She took the ice cream. “Fine, but I’m not happy about it,” she grumbled up at him as he took his own treat from the window. Vanilla with cherries on top. She turned her attention back to the girl. “Thanks. Have a good night.” Her tone lifted a little bit with the smile on her face. It was a polite interaction, but one that was still genuine. Like she really did hope the young woman behind the counter at the ice cream shop was going to have a good night. “I might have to beat you up later.”

He arched an eyebrow while stepping away from the shop in tow with her. They walked in tandem with one another as if there wasn’t a foot height difference between them. His long strides seemed to oddly match up with her shorter, more hurried steps. “Is that what you’re into?” He scooped a mouthful of ice cream from his bowl into his mouth, humming at the flavor. “This is  _ really _ fucking good.”

The feigned annoyance had melted off of her face as she took a large lick off of her cone. “I fucking told you, man!” she jeered, knocking into him with her side. He glanced down at her. Beneath the streetlights, she looked like an impish beauty. Like she was about to be up to no good with the grin on her lips. His heart leapt into his throat. He also may or may not have been picturing that look beaming down from on top of him later, but he really was trying to shove that into the back of his mind.  _ “You _ didn’t believe me, but you should’ve. I’ve lived here for like a solid year and a half. This place is my fucking  _ shit  _ once it opens in the spring. We get a few sweet months of homemade ice cream before it all goes away in the fall.”

Ice cream melted into a sweet puddle in his mouth, swirling around with the juices from the dark cherries. He swallowed to briefly take a break before having another spoonful. “You live here all year long?” he wondered, receiving a nod in response. “You don’t go back home once school’s out for the year?”

She snorted. “I spent the first eighteen years of my life trying to get out of Hatchetfield,” she explained. “I sure as hell won’t be living there again of my own free will.” The joking tone died on her lips. A darker look seemed to wash over her eyes, and suddenly, he felt anxiety creeping over him. Had he asked the wrong question? This had to be his fault. He began to calculate in his mind just how long it would take to walk back to his place from where they were. It wasn’t looking great for him. “But I guess that doesn’t matter. I’ve still got another whole year of school left before graduation, so there’s some time.”

He nodded to himself. That made sense… or did it? He turned to her with furrowed brows. “Wait, aren’t we the same age?” he asked. Another nod was directed at him. “Did you take a break year or something?”

“Yep,” she chirped through a big mouthful of ice cream. The smile couldn’t stop from coming through at the sight of her taking a bite that was definitely too big considering how cold it was. She looked a little ridiculous but at the same time still ridiculously attractive. “I escaped to Guatemala after my freshman year. Needed to do… some soul searching or some shit like that. Did mostly backpacking.” She was cool, too. Not that he couldn’t have guessed that she would be. She was definitely out of his math nerd league. Cool artsy hot girls didn’t usually go for math nerds who played tennis. She took a deep breath in as if she were bracing herself for what she was going to say next. “Then my sister was in an accident.”

A pause hung between them, and he feared once again that he had asked a question he shouldn’t have. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he blurted out. It seemed like something she was holding onto in her mind. Like there was some sort of guilt there. He shouldn’t have even asked. Why did he do that? It didn’t need to happen then. They were friends. He could find out more about her as time went on. 

She looked up at him as if she hadn’t realized her gaze had wandered off. “Don’t be,” she insisted, but her voice stayed soft in its tone. “She’s okay. Well, as okay as she can be at least.” She scooped up a drip off the side of her cone, which promptly went right into her mouth. “She lost one of her legs from the knee down, which kind of fucked everyone up for a while.” Another beat of silence. He wasn’t sure what to say or how to proceed. It was more information than he bargained for in asking if she took a break year, but he wasn’t about to stop her from sharing. “She broke up with her fiance, who was driving but was totally fine. Things sort of fell apart. She kind of blamed him, which wasn’t right. Because even though he’s an asshole, it wasn’t his fault at all.” She shrugged with a heavy sigh. “I ended up coming home to try and help out, but I came back to everything falling apart. My parents were knee deep in a divorce that was just exacerbated by the accident. Jane and Tom were splitting their shit up. Then here I was some college drop out, who just got dumped off a plane, left to pick up all the pieces.”

“Jesus,” he whispered before he could stop himself. His eyes went wide as they met hers. “I mean… I didn’t mean… I’m sorry, Emma. That really… sucks.” That was true. Maybe it wasn’t the best or most sensitive way to say it, but it was still a fair point. For a moment, he wished he knew her better or even knew her then. That he could help that confused twenty year old who was all jetlagged and confused about everything going on. “Are things any better now?” It could have been a loaded question, but he couldn’t stop the words from spilling out of his mouth.

“Well,” she began. A little brightness had found its way to her voice. “Mom and Dad got divorced, which was pretty whatever to me honestly. I hated both of them growing up, so I didn’t  _ really _ care until my mom started reaching out.” She had mentioned her mother in passing after breakfast the week before. That her mom made the most incredible breakfast spread. Meats and fruits and eggs as far as the eye could see. It sounded incredible and also not like something someone who hated their mother would say. “Which was weird at first, but we started talking and went to some therapy. Now, I think we all agree that my dad was just some manipulative asshole who was pinning us all against each other.” She shrugged again while taking a bite out of her cone. Her shoulder knocked into his arm again. “But what about you, Mr. Senior? What’s your plan?”

That was something he hadn’t thought about too much. There wasn’t really a plan at all actually. The world outside of college had seemed so far away for so long that he didn’t really know what was going to happen in the spring. To be fair, he didn’t really think he’d have to go making plans on his own. Things had changed very drastically and the future felt like a brick wall he was running full speed ahead at. “Well, I’m getting this degree in math,” he started.

“Oh, fucking gross,” she muttered, smug grin cross her lips. 

“Whatever, you still did it with me.”

_ “‘Did it’”? _ Are we twelve?”

“Oh, shut up.” She chuckled and leaned into him. The cool night air was hitting his bare arms, so her warmth was welcome. “No, I’m getting my degree in May, and I guess I’ll get a job. I’ll probably end up being a teacher or an accountant or something like that. I don’t--”

“Dude, don’t be a teacher,” she replied seriously. “My mom’s a teacher, and she hates that shit. Just don’t do it.”

“Does she teach on the island?”

She nodded. “Oh yeah, maybe you knew her. I think she taught over at Whitewater, which would make sense for you, you dumb fucking timerwolf,” she teased. The fact that she had taken note of something about him made him feel like his heart was full of hot cocoa. Warm and sweet. “She worked at the elementary school for a really long time. She was the art teacher.”

Nearly choking on his ice cream, he looked down at her with his eyebrows raised. “Your mom is Mrs. Perkins?” he gaped. When he thought about it, that actually made sense. Emma looked a lot like his elementary school art teacher. Small and sharp. Strong jawlines and high cheekbones. Dainty noses and rough personalities. Mrs. Perkins had been everyone’s favorite teacher. A funny and gruff art teacher to contrast with all the soft voices and gentle techniques. “Oh man, she was the best.”

A smile lingered on her lips. This one was fond. A little bittersweet almost. Like she was thinking back to a different time. Lost for just one wistful moment. “Yep, that would be Silvia,” she agreed. “She was everyone’s favorite teacher, but the fucking joke’s on them because I was her favorite problem child.” That elicited a real laugh out of him. Mostly because he wasn’t expecting the statement. The idea that she was a problem child didn’t seem far off, though. Not because she was trouble now, but she just had this air of not giving a single fuck that he couldn’t even comprehend. There was something so free about her. Like she was a cat who would stop by a house just for some food but couldn’t be kept in anywhere. He glanced between them, finding at some point that their hands had intertwined. His eyes went wide. “Oh, c’mon, Paul. Friends can hold hands.” Her hands was small in his. He hadn’t ever thought of his hands as particularly big until she said something, and he still wasn’t convinced. She was just small, but he did secretly like how her hand felt wrapped up with his own. “Unless you don’t want to.”

Her words rolled around in his head. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to, but at the same time, he wasn’t sure he didn’t want to. There was no doubt that he was enjoying almost everything about her. She was exciting and beautiful. Everything about her felt familiar and exciting all at once. It was like this person was someone he already knew or was meant to know at some point in his life. “No, it’s okay,” he whispered, squeezing down on her hand slightly when she went to pull away. Jess did have a thing for holding his hand. When they walked. When they sat around. When they fell asleep. There was always some sort of contact, which he loved. However, it seemed to be that way with Emma as well. She was a very touchy person. Reaching out to touch him in the slightest of ways. Ways that might not even be considered affectionate. Smacking his arm as she laughed. Bumping into him as they walked. And then there were the softly intimate ways. How she reached out to him in the night as she slept. A soft hand on his side when he woke up briefly. Her hand somehow finding its way into his as they walked down the barely lit streets. It felt close and heartfelt especially for someone he had only known for a week. “You hands are cold, though.”

“Well, I’m eating ice cream, dingus,” she shot back. Her cone was nearly finished. His painfully slow ice cream eating time was something he always got shit for as a kid. By the time he would finish his ice cream his grandmother gave them as kids in the summer, it was just a bowl of vanilla flavored milk soup. One time, his oldest brother walked by and knocked his face right into it, nearly sending him into a fit of tears that no doubt would have mixed in nicely with the melted ice cream all over his face. “And also, not all of us can be a goddamn fucking furnace.”

“I’m not  _ that  _ warm,” he lamely argued. He was, though. By design for whatever reason, he was just in a state of constant heat. Even if it didn’t always affect him, he just radiated warmth wherever he went. Jess had always curled up happily to him, leeching off of the heat he was throwing off. It was part of the reason he always woke up wrapped around her. She was so cold constantly. “Besides, are you going to blame your ice cream for your feet being so cold?”

She looked up at him with an amused grin. “Oh yeah? You’re going there, huh?” she responded without skipping a beat. Her feet had been terribly cold the weekend before. He woke up to ice blocks parked on his calves, but when he looked at her sleeping face, he couldn’t bear to move from her. Instead, despite his brain telling him not to, he kissed her forehead and nuzzled closer to her. “Because if you want to do that, I’ll stick one of these cold feet so far up your ass you’ll be tasting it for the next decade.”

“Maybe that’s what I want,” he challenged. The look on her face matched the way he felt. A little bewildered. A little amused. Wholly shocked with the words that just left his mouth. Any other time with any other person, he might have back pedaled as hard as he could, but he jutted his chin out instead. “Yeah, you don’t know me. Maybe I’m into crap like that.”

Her face pinched in disgust, but her smile never faded. “God, you’re so fucking gross,” she groaned, leaning closer to him. Anyone who passed them on the street probably would have thought something more was going on there, but there was no real commitment between them aside from the foundation being built between them. He imagined what it would have been like to have that problem child in his life as a kid or even just as a teenager. Someone to have fun with. Someone who understood what he was about despite contrasting with him in so many ways. “I’m not sticking my foot up your ass, you fucking sicko.”

A smile broke out along his face. Broad. Beaming. This was exactly what his sad sack life had needed. She was like a set of jumper cables to the dead battery that was his life. There was a spark for the first time in a while, and all at once, Jess saying he was miserable with no ambition made sense in his head. He had been. Everything had piled up on him and felt bad. The world had been out to get him. To make everything into a giant dumpster fire set to consume everything he loved. But things had changed even in just the span of a week. Even Jess noticed he seemed happier. “Oh, thank god,” he said with a laugh. “I was really hoping you wouldn’t try to call me out on that.”

“Well, I have a decent idea of what you’re into,” she mused, interlocking their fingers. Again, it felt like had it been a different time this would have been someone he could be madly in love with already. Like he could have fallen head over heels for this woman he barely knew, and he had no idea why. He didn’t have any idea what she was about. Almost everything he knew about her he had to take at face value, yet he trusted her inherently. “At least some of it, but I’m willing to learn.” He swallowed hard, his heart leaping into his throat.

Their hands stayed intertwined as she pulled out the key to get in the front door of her apartment building.


	7. Dynamic Nicknaming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma and Paul go back to her place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More shenanigans. I don't know that I have too much to say here except I appreciate you guys reading and enjoying :D <3

Paul wasn’t sure how he ended up at Emma’s place again. This time, wearing a ratty old long sleeved t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. Really, he knew exactly how it happened, but it certainly hadn’t been his intention. The goal had been to ask the people in the room to turn that music down before returning to his run. That obviously didn’t happen, though. He, once again, got distracted by her ass and roped into getting ice cream with her. Not that he was complaining about seeing her or getting ice cream. The ice cream had been delicious, and he had sort of been hoping she was going to invite him over all week. 

A water droplet rolled down his forehead. He brushed it away with the back of his hand. The shower at her apartment was a little cramped. He felt like a giant in it when he never really considered himself to be  _ that _ big of a person. Likely, she was just small, so the size of the shower didn’t matter all that much to her. Meanwhile, he was just about crouching the whole time trying to maneuver around in the tiny space.

She had been holed away in the bathroom for a solid twenty minutes, taking her turn to rinse off the sweat from her own time at the gym. He sat on the edge of her bed, mindlessly petting the cat. The scent of her shampoo and body wash swirled around his senses. Not surprisingly, she didn’t have any sort of soap he would have normally used, but in this situation, he didn’t really care too much. He just wanted to get the smell of sweat off of him. As it turned out, he wasn’t upset about the scent of ‘autumn woods’ filling the air around him every time he moved. In fact, he almost liked it. It was like sleeping in her bed with his face buried in her hair except he could breathe and wasn’t afraid to move and wake her up in this instance.

The overhead lighting was on this time around, and oddly enough, it made the room feel smaller. Granted, that could have been due to the walls being completely covered by different pieces of art. Big half finished canvases. Small sketches that were detailed in ballpoint pen. It felt like he was in some sort of art exhibit, where the pieces were strewn about in all different states of doneness. Something about seeing the space felt almost like a privilege. As though not many people had gotten to do what he had done. See what he had seen.

He pushed off the mattress and across the floor. The quiet patter of paws followed him. Glancing down, he smiled at the cat. Green eyes stared up at him without breaking eye contact as Janis rubbed up against his leg. She really was a very cute cat. Quiet and loving. Since he walked in, she had yet to leave him alone save for when Emma would pass by. In which case, she immediately went to follow her mama around the apartment. Little whispers were shared between the two. Quiet smiles and unspoken communication. He almost wondered if he had been looking onto something private. An intimate moment he shouldn’t have been privy to, but had been lucky enough to witness.

On the wall across from her bed, he examined a few of her sketches. There were some little drawings of buildings on campus he recognized. Some faces he could have sworn he saw passing by here and there. One of them he could have sworn was of that kooky biology professor ranting and raving about something, arms illustrated as flailing all around him with excitement. There were plenty of them that starred Janis. Sitting in the window sunbathing. Laid out across the counter lazily cleaning herself. Staring off wide eyed at something he couldn’t even begin to imagine. 

Beneath the series of Janis pictures sat a set of familiar faces. He exhaled a silent laugh in disbelief. Sure enough, there was a small illustration of Ted and him from breakfast the week before. The smug grin, greasy mustache, and oddly suave hair were a dead giveaway for Ted. She managed to capture his likeness quite well. Paul, on the other hand, looked different than he might have imagined. When Ted showed back up at their booth before he left that day, he had jabbered on about how much Paul loved those stupid fucking pancakes. It ended in a banter back and forth between the two. He shot back that Ted couldn’t control himself around a bag of Doritos. Apparently, he must have smiled at some point because he stared back at Ted in the drawing with a sideways smile on his face as if he were mid-sentence and a picture had been taken. The likenesses were impressive. Even more impressive was the fact that she managed to capture him in such a way that made him look… happy.

Behind the bathroom door, he heard Emma talking. Not to herself. “Mom, no, I’m not being fucking dumb,” she groaned. He could hear her clearly over the vent that had been on constantly for the past forty five minutes.  _ “Mom.” _ The tone reminded him of a teenager who had just gotten embarrassed by her mother. He bit back a smile. “No, absolutely not!” A beat passed. He looked down to Janis and shrugged like she had asked him what he thought was going on. “ _ No, _ Mami. No estoy enamorado de  él.” He could hear her continue to grumble. “Friends, Mom.”

His eyebrows shot up. Was she talking about  _ him? _ He scrambled back over to her bed. His heart hammered in his chest to think of her telling her mother about him. Why did it feel like that? He pulled his legs up to sit cross legged in an attempt to look as natural as possible. There was no way he could let her know he was eavesdropping on her. To be fair, she was loud, but he had also been standing next to the bathroom door. His leg bounced up and down. She told her mom about him. Holy shit. 

The bathroom door swung open. She stood with a yellow towel wrapped around her torso. Her curls dripped water from their ends over her shoulders. “Yes,” she mumbled into the cellphone. “I will, Mom.” She glanced up at him. The corners of her mouth lifted to a smile immediately. His heart continued to race in his chest. “Yeah, love you, too. Goodnight.” The phone pulled from her face and she tapped toward the bottom of the screen with her thumb. “Sorry, my mom was being… nosy.”

“It’s okay,” he replied quickly. There was something very domestic with the situation before him. Sitting on her bed after just taking a shower. Staring out at her just wrapped in a towel after her own. Talking casually about a phone call with her mother. Like this was a normal Saturday night at home for them. He had only known her a week but felt like it had been a year. God, he had known Ted almost his whole life and they didn’t talk about the conversations they had with their mothers. 

He must have been staring at her because she smirked right at him. “What’re you looking at?” Well, for one, she was in only a towel in front of him, and there had been much alluding to a more sober sequel to the weekend before. But he also couldn’t get over how comfortable things felt around her. He was never comfortable anywhere as a general rule, yet with her, he had just fallen into a groove he didn’t know he had. “Huh, bathroom boy?” She moved toward him. Not that it was more than a few steps, but it felt like she was rushing over to him. To be close to him.

She stood close enough that her hair was dripping droplets of water on his shoulders. Instinctively, his hand went up to rest on her hip. He wasn’t sure what instinct it was. His thumb rubbed against the towel. “You’re just really pretty,” he admitted. It was the god’s honest truth. Even after tumbling out of a shower. Zero makeup. Just in a dingy yellow towel. There was this magnetic beauty that radiated off of her. It just drew him back in even when he missed those moments being close to Jess. Emma would just come in an eclipse any thought of Jessica Sanders.

Her own hand rested on his cheek. “Stop fucking buttering me up, nerd,” she chuckled, low and gravelly. She had been calling him a nerd since he mentioned his major. It was a name he had been tagged with most of his life, which he hated, but affectionately coming out of her mouth filled his heart with a strange giddiness. “You already know I’m going to fuck you. There’s no need to fucking flatter me.”

Before allowing him to respond, she was leaning down to press her lips up against his. He liked kissing her. It was always exciting. Every single kiss brought a small shot of adrenaline. His heart leapt into his throat. He had thought about kissing her while they waited in line for ice cream. They had been talking about nothing. Standing around laughing. She stood close enough to feel her warmth and kept peering up at him. Something inside him just wanted to kiss her. Once. Twice. As many times as she’d let him. 

At her feet, the towel fell into a damp pile. He broke away to stare up at her. A hand reached up to brush a curl off of her forehead. For a moment, he wondered if she was just exciting and fun because he had tried to make Jess jealous the previous weekend. That after the novelty wore off, he would wean off of her slowly. It was all good and fun but also served a purpose. Then the thoughts of hanging out with her back on the island came back to him. Swinging off the rope swing into the lake at Starry Cove. Sitting on the old abandoned railroad tracks with their feet dangling off in the air. Driving out late at night to hit the twenty four hour diner to eat garbage food.

“I’m not kidding,” he told her as his hand trailed down her now bare side. Her skin was soft and tanned. He wondered if she frequented the beach back on the island. At the very least she spent a lot of time outdoors. He found himself wondering more and more about her as a person. What she liked. How she spent her time. He fully decided that he definitely had not accidentally used her to distract himself or make Jess jealous. Everything was just interesting about her. He felt like he couldn’t get enough. Like she was a book he couldn’t put down. “You’re  _ really _ pretty, Em.”

She arched an eyebrow. “‘Em’?” she repeated, tilting her head to the side. He hadn’t meant to say it. There hadn’t been any thought at all behind the name. It just slipped out like it was sliding around on a slip and slide. Her hand hadn’t left his cheek, but she hadn’t leaned back in to kiss him again. This time, his heart sunk. Why did he think it was okay for him to give her a nickname? Sure, she had been nicknaming him since before she even knew his real name, but that didn’t mean it went both ways. “You should call me that again?”

He blinked. Not the response he was expecting. Honestly, though, the name was stuck in his throat now. For whatever reason, he had become terrified thinking that this person he really barely knew was going to be angry at him for something stupid. None of it made sense. Then again, she didn’t make sense. The way she made him feel didn’t make sense. Sense wasn’t something he should have been trying to make of the situation. “Em?” he responded as more of a question than the sure statement she was probably looking for.

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on, Paul,” she chided. Her other hand fell onto his other cheek. She had wanted him to call her by the nickname again, but all he wanted was for her to say his name just one more time. On her lips, it sounded like the smell of rain hitting the pavement on a hot summer day. Like the crunching of autumn leaves beneath his feet. So familiar but beautiful no less. “I know you can do better than that.”

It was hard to believe he had entered into this bizarre friendship with a beautiful pothead artist who climbed in through a window and then proceeded to make out with him in order to make his ex jealous. It was even harder to believe that he was excited about it. He had never looked forward to having a friendship as much as this one. Though, he also hadn’t ever had a friendship where he also was likely going to get fucked on the regular. If he was being honest, however, he probably would have been fine without that added bit. She was interesting enough on her own to keep him coming back day in and day out. Funny and smart and just a joy to talk to. She was really a dream.

His eyes locked with her own. The freckles of gold in her eyes twinkled in the light of her bedroom. They probably could have lit up the room just by themselves. A bright excitement seemed to live in her eyes. It was endearing almost immediately. “What’re you doing next weekend?” she asked quietly. Her fingers raked through his hair. The smile had faltered just slightly. It didn’t completely fade from her face, but it was almost as though the conversation had taken a more serious tone. Or maybe she was just attempting to be a little more serious.

Thumb grazing over the curve of her hip, he stared up at her with furrowed brows. “Nothing, I think,” he answered. He wracked his brain for what plans could be lingering in the upcoming weekend. The dates rolled by in his head until he landed on that weekend. He raised his brows. “Oh, Labor Day. No, I’m not doing anything. Ted’s going home, but I really don’t need to see my parents. So the plan was to stay home.”

“Would you like to come to my house?” she blurted out. The look on her face read the way he felt all the time. Shocked and a little concerned about the words she just said. Words she probably hadn’t meant to say out loud. “I mean, if you want… not, like, here, but back on the island. I’m going to visit my mom, and she fucking  _ loves _ company. We’ve got an extra bedroom, but only if you want to.” The babbling was almost cute, and he might have even told her as much if he wasn’t sitting there in shock. Inviting him home. To her mother’s house. His head was spinning. “Mom’s going to be out most of the weekend anyway, so I’m going to have the whole damn house to myself.  _ And _ if you decide you’re miserable, then Ted could bring you back. No big deal.”

He considered her offer. It would be nice to get out of the fucking apartment for a few days. Maybe even going to the beach could be an option. He spent so much of his time shut in back at Ted’s and his apartment cramming for quizzes and tests every other day. Actually trying to relax could be nice, but this was also someone he barely knew. Spending a weekend trapped at her mom’s house. Potentially finding the breaking point to whatever this friendship was while locked in each other’s company. Though, Ted would come to be a night in shining fucking armor if need be. He was always down to tell someone off. 

Her face had twisted with worry more the longer he spent without giving her an answer. The sight made his heart feel like it was crumbling in his chest. Really, what did he have to lose? Her if things went south. Maybe. But he could also gain a great weekend out of it. “Yeah, okay,” he answered. It came out more certain than he had felt. Like his subconscious knew better than his head did that he wanted to take her up on her offer. “I could use a break from this place.”

A smile spread across her lips. “Cool.” Their lips met again. He could stand to have a third weekend in a row with this. Although, it would be a little bit more difficult with her mom around. He supposed that would be a bridge to cross when they got there. She pulled away again to babble more explanation to him, “We have an extra room if you want to use that, too. Jane’s still at school, so it’ll just be you, me, and then maybe my mom. We can totally fucking veg all fucking weekend.” Another kiss. His hand found its way into her hair, pulling her deeper into the kiss, and in turn, she fell into his lap. “I can make you some chocolate chip pancakes.”

He grinned against her lips. “Now, I’m sold,” he chuckled in between kisses. He fell back onto the bed with her still pulled against him. His free hand found her back. Fingers splayed out across her skin.

“I knew that would fucking get you,” she mumbled as her hand snuck down to toy with the hem of his shirt. “Plus, I was sort of hoping to get into this a little bit again. Saturday night was going to be pretty fucking dull by myself.”

“We can’t have that.” He moved to allow her to yank his shirt up and over his head. A smirk glowed down at him. The exact one he had hoped to see. The same one he had thought about all week. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to go back to Hatchetfield for the weekend with her. They could laze about all day. He could get some work done. Maybe watch her doodle out of the corner of his eye. Get a look into the life he was so curious about. Peer into a little piece of her soul he was so drawn to deep down.

“Then it’s a good thing you’ll be there to keep me busy, huh?”


	8. Practical Applications of Pulse Points

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paul and Emma have a late night discussion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, friends, I know I probably don't NEED to tell you this, but I'm just here to share a friendly reminder:
> 
> 1\. wear a mask  
> 2\. avoid large gatherings  
> 3\. wear a mask  
> 4\. stay home if you don't feel well  
> 5\. wear a fucking mask
> 
> Okay, stay safe and well <3 :D
> 
> also things get mildly sexy toward the end here but nothing especially graphic!

Emma’s apartment was surprisingly quiet in the middle of the night. There were no distant sounds from the street or quiet sirens blaring somewhere off in the night. No one was outside the building screaming at someone while clearly drunk out of their mind. Paul’s place really was in kind of a shitty location. Hers was making him rethink his current living arrangements. Even when the noise outside wasn’t terrible, the noise of Ted constantly yammering on was just as disruptive and headache inducing. 

The light from the moon flooded into the space. Everything was painted in a silvery glow. Shadows danced along the walls, intermingling with drawings, as a breeze passed by outside. He had woken up staring up at the blank ceiling. If not for the distinct smell of her, he would have thought he was back at Jess’s apartment. It was a common occurrence for him to wake up throughout the night while he was there. He would toss and turn for hours until she finally rolled over to tell him to chill out. It always ended with him just staring up at the ceiling.

But this night, he was able to look to his side to find Emma there, absolutely knocked out. Her jaw hung slightly slack. Each breath she took was even and calm. Dark lashes fluttered through what he assumed was a dream. Hair spilled over her white pillowcases. A dark halo around her sleeping head. It felt like something out of a movie, that he would wake up like this and just watch her sleep. Sure, maybe it was mildly creepy, but he couldn’t look away. There was this part of him he couldn’t manage to swallow down that was simply enamored by her.

It was a terrifying realization. To think he might  _ like _ her. Well, he did like her, but this was supposed to be a friend. For god’s sake, it had only been a fucking week. He didn’t need to go getting overly attached to someone already. Really, he didn’t need to go and catch feelings for anyone. Feelings complicated things. At least the ones that he could feel starting to stew in the pit of his gut did. In his defense, he wasn’t entirely sure what those feelings were exactly. She had an inherent comfort about her. Not just in the way she lived, which was easy and breezy like she just didn’t give a single fuck about what anyone thought, but solely with her. There wasn’t room to be awkward as all get out because things just flowed around her. Even when he was texting her, there was no uncomfortable lull in conversation. They just kind of clicked.

He wanted to keep her around because of that. More like he wanted her to stick around with him. It felt strangely like a once in a lifetime opportunity to know her. Truthfully, he didn’t know her, but he wanted to. More than he had wanted anything in a long time. Even more so than when he had pleaded with Jess to stay as she gathered up her things from his place. He thought about Jess commenting on how he looked happy. Perhaps he was feeling happier. Better about things in the span of a week. Fuller due to the nervous butterflies churning around in his stomach. 

Once more, he looked at her. Slivers of moonlight laid across her skin like ribbons laid over her by the heavens. The sheets were bunched at her waist, leaving her torso bare to the world. Not the world, per se. Just him. He fought the urge to reach out and run a hand over her side. From the curve of her him. Over her ribs. Onto her shoulder. Finishing out along her cheekbone. He kept his eyes on her sleeping form, attempting to take a mental snapshot of the moment. If there was a moment of taking things too far about to spill out of him, he wanted to be able to keep this moment.

A heavy sigh left him. He squeezed his eyes shut. What the fuck was wrong with him? It had only been a week. A goddamn week and he was acting like some lovestruck weirdo at someone he just met.  _ While _ he was still trying to get over the heartbreak that was still lingering from the one who just left. He never intended to fall into some teen romcom cliche. That was something he wanted to actively avoid. Nothing sappy or cliched was supposed to happen in his life.

Then his heart leapt into his throat when he opened his eyes to find her staring back at him. “You okay?” she mumbled, clearly still half asleep. One of her eyes was still shut as if the moon was blinding her. A lazy smile crossed his lips despite the internal dilemma that was drolling on in his head. “It’s like…” She leaned back behind her to grab her phone off the bookshelf beside her bed. Briefly, the screen lit up, and she squinted harder at the light before she placed it back down. “Three AM, dude. Why are you up?”

He thought about the answers he could give her. Every moment that led up to his ex-girlfriend dumping him, claiming that things were miserable--that  _ he _ was miserable--were playing over and over again in his mind. The fear of when it would happen with her had been rising in his gut. The absolute horror that he was thinking that way about someone he had clearly said he wanted to be friends with was on the tip of his tongue. “You told your mom about me,” he decided on. It came out as more of a breath than even a whisper. Like he hadn’t even wanted to say it. Her other eye opened as she narrowed both at him. “I heard you on the phone in the bathroom.”

“You been dropping eaves on me, Samwise?” she wondered with a yawn. 

Biting down on his cheek, he flopped down onto his back. “ _ Lord of the Rings? _ Are you  _ fucking _ kidding me?” he groaned, louder than his previous words. He turned his head to look back at her, finding her eyes had opened fully again. “But no… I was looking at your… stuff.” He gestured to the art on the walls. “I was looking at your drawings of Janis by the bathroom.”

She propped herself up on her elbow. “So you speak Spanish?” she asked. He shook his head. With an arched brow, she returned the smile that had touched his lips. “You realize I could have been talking about anyone then, right?” His eyes went wide. Of course. Why did he assume she was talking to her mother about him? The boy she met a week ago at her pot dealer’s party that she was not invited to. “Like, I could have been talking about Melissa or literally anyone else.” Fuck, she was right. He wished he could just close his eyes and open them again to find he had been having a bad dream, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen. “But I was  _ totally  _ talking about you.”

His eyes slid shut as he took a deep breath in. “Fuck you,” he muttered, meaning for the pharse to be more under his breath than it came out.

“You kind of already did, my guy,” she teased. And that was just how it seemed to go in the limited time they had spent talking. Just a series of teasing and joking in the midst of more real statements. “So let’s get this shit straight. You’re up at three in the morning because I was talking to my mom about you?”

No, that wasn’t it. He assumed that was why his mind started racing about everything. He hadn’t even met Jess’s parents. Sometimes, he wondered if they even really knew about him. He knew they existed, but there had been no talk of him ever meeting them. Yet here he was, a week into…  _ something _ about to meet Emma’s mother the following weekend after she had already been alerted to his existence. He turned his head to look back at her again. She watched him, eyes still heavily lidded. Her hair hung wildly around her head. Curls bouncing everywhere. He thought about the freckles sprinkled across her nose. The little sun kissed constellations that littered her tanned skin. The small tattoo of the crown between her shoulder blades. The crinkles at the corners of her eyes that formed when she laughed. “Em, I don’t know how this whole friends thing is going to work,” he whispered, voice serious. 

The smile faltered on her lips. “How do you figure?” she questioned, brows knitting together.

Laying there with her, talking, felt so oddly familiar. Not because they had just done it the weekend before. Even then, he felt oddly accustomed to being there with her in such a mundane way. Chatting like people who were in an actual long term relationship. Talking about anything and everything. Their days. Their pasts. Their futures. He looked right into her eyes. A burnt caramel oozing into his heart. “I just like you,” he admitted. He did. Very much. What he wanted from whatever they were doing, he wasn’t sure, but what he did know was that he was very into her from what he had already witnessed.

Her features softened. She scooted closer to him, so she was able to throw an arm over his middle. “Well,” she started, staring out the window. Her eyes were wider now. More awake. Like he had said something that rang an alarm bell in her mind. Fingers drummed against his bare stomach. “It doesn’t have to be anything too serious.” She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes once more as she plotted out her next words. “No labels or anything if you want.” 

He blinked at her. Before he had woken up, he had dreamed of being back in Hatchetfield, but he was nowhere that he recognized fully. A little house not far from downtown. Modestly furnished. Enough space for maybe two people, but it very much seemed to just be him. He rolled out of bed to get dressed. A plain suit. Nothing special. He ate a simple breakfast of eggs and toast. A little blue car drove him into town to the large looming building at the center of downtown. He went in, sat at a desk, and typed his fingers away for hours. Rolling his eyes occasionally at stupid remarks Ted made. Emma’s friend Melissa would pop in from time to time to make some quip and then scampered out once again. Noon hit, and he was off. Out of the building and down a couple of blocks. Two coffee shops sat on either side of the street. Starbucks and a place he was pretty sure said Beanies on the awning, but the script on it really was almost indistinguishable. That was the door he chose. A bell rang when he entered. The smell of coffee and pastries greeted him in such a heavy wave he could have sworn he was actually there. Behind the counter, he found her. Looking tired and annoyed. Older. His heart still leaped in his chest. She sold him a coffee and smirked at his feeble attempts at flirting. The freckles still littered her face. There was no nose ring or tattoos, but there was still a distant brightness in her smile. A sense of magic in her laugh. As he left the coffee shop, he saw a phone number scribbled on the cardboard holder on the outside of his overpriced cup of black coffee.

The thing about it was that the dream felt so real. Like they had both been there. Like he had been hopelessly in love with a girl he couldn’t ask for her name. But that wasn’t possible. They were here, and this was now. “Okay,” he hummed, trying to not think about the fingers tracing circles down by his hips. “So something that’s not friends.”

“Something a little more than friends,” she corrected. If he hadn’t been so uptight, he might have chuckled at her quick correction. As if she hadn’t suggested that they could be friends only. Like she wanted something more, too.  _ Enamorado.  _ The word and its possible cognate rang loudly in his brain.

“A little more than friends,” he agreed. She moved closer to him. Her skin pressed up against his. A shiver ran down his spine. “But no labels on it?” She nodded, fingers creeping back up to trace imaginary shapes on his chest through light tufts of chest hair. It was an action that was soothing to him. A gentle touch that felt inexplicably right. “I guess that means you like me, too.”

She snorted. “Duh, asshole,” she scoffed, leaning down to press her lips to his. She hovered just over his mouth for a moment. The space between them could have told a thousand stories from a thousand lifetimes. That was how it felt at least even if he knew that wasn’t possible. Breaths mingled together, dancing a complicated tango. It was a moment he could have stayed in forever. Close to her. His brain was completely wrapped up in her. “I thought that was pretty fucking obvious, though.” Her lips brushed against his as she spoke. Another shiver.

His hand found the back of her head. Fingers tangled with her curls. Their lips crushed together, but it was different this time. A little less light in its way. Desperate wasn’t the way to describe the feeling. Deeper, perhaps. Something a little more than two kids hooking up after a party. More like two lives crashing together. When it all boiled down, he couldn’t really pinpoint the exact emotion that triggered in the back of his throat. Absolutely indescribable. With his free hand, he yanked her over him. She threw one of her legs over his hips without breaking from his lips. He moved his hand from her hair down her back. The grip didn’t go to her ass, though, as he had initially intended, but instead, his palm rested against the small of her back. She was soft and warm. Like the mulled cider of her eyes. He wrapped his arms around her back, pulling her close to him.

Hands landed on his cheeks. He could feel her smile against his mouth. “Let go of me, nerd,” she rasped against his lips. Hesitantly, his arms unwound from her back, and he was immediately dismayed when she pulled back from him. Until her lips dragged her lips down from his and over his jaw. Slow and calculated. He had definitely been spending the three AM hour in an interesting way now two Saturdays in a row. The week before, he had a very different angle he was enjoying her from. As it was, teeth were nipping at the soft skin of his neck. He swallowed hard. Her mouth hovered over the pulse point on his neck. It was almost possible to feel her smirk. Lips landed on his skin. Teeth dug in just slightly. A pressure he didn’t know was going to send him reeling suddenly made his brain go to mush, tongue touching against his neck as she sucked gently. A moan involuntarily left his throat. She lifted her lips from him for a moment before replacing them with a softer kiss. “Interesting.”

She sat up just slightly, so she could trail kisses down his chest. In their wake, her lips left a path of fire. Like lightning had struck over and over again, and he was standing in a field holding a metal pole. Lips and teeth and tongue. Over and over. On his chest. Down his stomach. Over the wells of his hips. “You’re fucking killing me,” he laughed breathlessly.

A brow arched up at him. “You can’t die on me now,” she told him. “I’ve got fucking pancakes to make you.” He couldn’t hold back the laugh, which she returned. He liked that she was funny. Really funny. In a week, he had laughed more with her than with most people he had ever met. Maybe his brother, but other than that, he was hard pressed to think of a bigger comedian in his life. “I don’t know why you’re fucking laughing. I’m being serious. Pancakes are serious fucking business.”

Another kiss dipped just below his waistline. “Emma,” he groaned, squirming beneath her touch. She liked to tease. That was evident even not in bed. She gave shit almost constantly, but it was almost endearing as though she only did it if she really liked someone. And she really liked him. The smile spread back across his lips. “You’re really trying to get out of making those pancakes, I think.”

“Oh yeah?” she mused. The tips of her fingers danced along his thigh from outside and then into his inner thigh. Teeth bit down lightly against his hip. “I don’t think I am. I think I’m trying to show my gentleman caller a good fucking time, but if you disagree, I could always stop.”

Without being able to stop himself, he shook his head.  _ “No,” _ he spat out a bit more eager than he thought it was going to come out. He cleared his throat. “Um, no… no, thank you. You don’t have to stop.”

One small hand splayed out along his lower abdomen. The smug grin on her face was blinding, but he didn’t mind so much. “I didn’t think you’d want that,” she replied, glancing just below his waist. “I had a strong hunch that the sad bathroom boy was looking for a little sumpin sumpin here.”

He tossed his head against the pillows as fingers grazed against him. “I mean, Em, I’m not going to stop you,” he chuckled, still unable to fully catch his breath.

“Well, alright, Paul,” she hummed against his skin. His name dripped from her mouth like honey. He wished she would say it more. Lips dragged further down. “I think we’re going to have some goddamn fun then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "just friends" hah what a joke.
> 
> ALSO THE LOVE FOR THIS IS OVERWHELMING AND I APPRECIATE IT SO MUCH. I AM SO FLATTERED THAT YOU GUYS LIKE THIS SO MUCH. I will respond to comments tomorrow because I need to scoot on off to bed, but thank you all so much for reading this lil story :'D


	9. Intermediate Familial Relations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma takes her kind of friend Paul home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, friends! I took another break and embarrassingly played nearly 20 hours worth of the Outer Worlds this weekend, so here we are I guess.
> 
> I hope everyone is staying safe and well!!

When feeling anxious, time tends to pass by either unbearably slow or excruciatingly fast. That was how that entire week felt for Paul. Everything just passed by in a blur. An exam he really should have spent his weekend studying for. A paper he had foolishly forgotten to start until the week it was due. A tennis match that could have gone better but he had definitely had worse. Things felt strange. A little tingly even. Like he was just sitting around, autopiloting around in his life to get through to the weekend. 

The weekend.

His Fridays usually ended early, which allowed for some extra time to jump on whatever work he needed to get done before Monday, but instead, he found himself fidgeting in the passenger seat of Emma’s shitty car. The drive itself was familiar. The long stretches of barren highway were the same he would see every trip to and from school. Trees were still covered with green. In a matter of months, they would be bare. Skeletons of their lush green selves that will emerge once more from their snow covered slumbers in the spring. Crowns of gold and red would take the place of green by the next month. He would observe them from the passenger seat of Ted’s car all while attempting to tune out the incessant ramblings of his friend. It wasn’t ever a difficult task, he found. Getting lost in the colors of the leaves was easy. Being swallowed whole by the sparse trees and their dying blooms came naturally.

He watched as the foliage flew by while they sped down the highway. It was almost therapeutic but not in the way it was with Ted. Emma quietly hummed along with  _ Bring Back That Leroy Brown _ for the fifth time this drive. After the third time, he had triumphantly announced it was  _ Sheer Heart Attack _ stuck in her CD player after a quick google search. She had smiled but didn’t stop singing along with the song as she nodded. He grinned back at her when she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye.

The silence they were shrouded in during the drive was unusual. She was someone who could fill up any space with some sort of chatter. Not even mindless chatter either. There was always something ticking around in her brain that she was able to just sit and talk about. At length more often than not. Sometimes a quick little quip. Always a fully formed thought. This time around, though, they were left with their own thoughts as Queen quietly provided them a soundtrack. 

Not that it made him uncomfortable. He was good at dealing with silence. Growing up, he was a quiet kid. Kept his head down as best he could. Didn’t cause much of a fuss. Keeping a low profile was kind of his thing. Making sure his mouth stayed shut. Blending into the background. Playing a quiet supporting character in his own story. A flower that eased so naturally into the wall. She, however, was loud. Like an enormous brass band wailing away on their instruments. A clap of thunder rolling through a hot summer night. The crashing of waves against the sandy shores on a quiet morning. Whatever sound the universe made when it was created, that was what she felt like. Larger than life itself. 

Needless to say, it was strange to have her be so quiet. Pensive even. There was a small smile on her lips most of the drive, but she remained pretty quiet aside from their polite conversation they had at the start of the drive. Talking about their weeks. She had a literature exam that she was pretty sure she failed, but the marks came back high enough that she was surprised. A solid B for just talking out of her ass about a story she hadn’t read. Something Henry James, maybe. She couldn’t entirely remember and said she had been too busy over the weekend to read it.

Green exit signs rolled by. Mile markers allowed him to keep track of just how close they were to the island. Exit 12 B was the one he and Jack would take and was quickly approaching by his math. A small sign read:  _ MILE 23.  _ Very close. He glanced back at Emma, who was now mumbling half of the words to  _ Lily of the Valley. _ Only half of them, though. Clearly, even though the CD had been stuck in her car for the better part of three years, she still didn’t know all the words to all the songs. 

A nervousness rolled into his gut. What if this was all a big mistake? What if he should have just stayed back at school like he had planned? Things would have picked up the following weekend. He would have spent more time at her place than expected. Saturday night would have been spent largely in bed. Maybe they would have had drinks over some shitty takeout. Instead, he was staying at his elementary school art teacher’s house while the looming threat of his parents lingered somewhere else on the island. He swallowed hard as she shifted into the rightmost lane. 

_ Exit 12 B _

_ Nantucket Bridge _

_ Clivesdale _

_ Hatchetfield _

The Nantucket Bridge was nothing to write home about. A plain old grey bridge that stood over murky Atlantic waters. Most people who saw the signs for it assumed the bridge would lead to the actual island of Nantucket, but that was a common misconception.  _ That _ bridge was a number of miles further up the coast. While Hatchetfield wasn’t the worst place to live, going over the bridge into Nantucket, one was certainly more likely to be greeted by a happy face than going over its namesake bridge. He could distinctly remember Jess’s disappointment about that very detail the first time he brought her home.

Bridges as a whole, though, tended to make him nervous. Ever since he was a little boy, he would hold his breath and squeeze his eyes shut while passing over them. Curled up in the back of his mother’s luxury sedan while they drove off to one of his brother’s games in Clivesdale. Fingers clenching down on the leather upholstery of his father’s SUV as they traveled onto the actual island of Nantucket. Every single time without fail he would imagine the bridge collapsing. Plunging into a pit of water. Unable to escape the death box slowly filling with liquid. Fearing death and having to accept it all at once. 

But as soon as they were on the bridge, they were passing the  _ ‘Welcome to Hatchetfield’ _ sign. A warm reminder that they were done with the length of the bridge. That he was home. Because that was what Hatchetfield was at the bottom of everything. It was his home. The only place he really knew as home, at least. He hadn’t ever thought about living anywhere else. Sure, he lived at school, but there was always something that called him back to the island. Sometimes it felt a little like a siren song. As if there were something more sinister at play trying to lure him back in. An old hag with an apple. A wolf in grandma’s bed. At the end of the day, though, he was pretty sure it was just his dread of going back to his parent’s house.

Instead of turning left at the light at the intersection by the old office building that recently became occupied by some technical corporation, they turned right. There was some comfort to be had in coming into town. He liked the familiarity of it. If there was one thing he knew, it was Hatchetfield. The streets. The people. The landmarks. He knew it all like the back of his hand. Everything made sense for him there. Living at school felt a little like he was staying long term in some sort of hotel. There was no permanence there. A little nomadic even. Like all paths led back to the island.

The car turned down several streets, through the neighborhoods he used to run his paper route on. Dozens of houses with a modest amount of space between them. Enough room to not have neighbor’s up each other’s asses but close enough that there was plenty of room for all of the small suburban houses. White picket fences lined the street. This was what he always thought of when he said that Hatchetfield wasn’t a terrible place to live. On paper, it was actually a pretty nice place to live. The school systems were good. The neighborhoods were nice. The parks were well maintained. A real generational small town vibe came off of the little city that made it appealing to anyone who ended up moving there.

He tapped his finger against the car door, wondering if her house was one of the ones he used to deliver the newspaper to. His eyes flicked up to the street signs every time she turned. Wicker Place. Andover Way. McMickle Road. All names that came flooding back into his memory. Riding his bike out on an early summer morning. Feeling the cool damp breeze in his hair that he didn’t bother combing before he left. He wondered if he had traveled out any later in the day if he might have run into her out playing with her own friends. If they would have been friends then, too.

She turned the car gently into a short driveway on Mirtis street beside a black Toyota Camry. He stared at the small blue house through the windshield. A dusty blue home that was triangular in its face but clearly boxed out past the main section. White window panes with navy blue shutters stared back at him. There wasn’t much of a porch aside from a small overhang over the yellow front door. Around the yard, there was a wooden fence that had been well maintained as he could recall dropping the newspaper up on the front stoop those years ago. 

“Well, here we are,” she announced as she put her car into park. She turned to look at him with a sideways grin, but there was something behind her eyes. A little uncertainty maybe. Something that read a bit anxious. Akin to how he was feeling really. “Bad news, though, Mom’s home, so that’s something we’ll have to deal with for a little while.” She shrugged. “I don’t know, though. You probably got her a lot-ness back when you were in school, though. I can’t imagine an art teacher teaching fucking eight year olds to glue macaroni on paper is anything less than a little fucking nuts.”

Almost in unison, they stepped out of their respective car doors. It was only in that moment he realized how cramped the car was. His legs felt tight and uncomfortable. He rolled his neck to try and coax the crick out of it that had showed up sometime during their drive. “I don’t know,” he began before opening up the rear passenger door to scoop up his backpack. A few days worth of clothes and his laptop were suitable enough for a weekend back in Hatchetfield. A lazy weekend at that. He tossed the bag over his shoulder. “Mrs. Perkins was always my favorite teacher even though my macaroni art usually didn’t win over the critics.”

A snort left her. His heart leapt in his chest, and he found himself scolding it, trying desperately to get it to cut the shit. “Silvia,” she responded, nudging the door she had opened to grab her own bag shut with her hip. “She’s not going to want you to call her Mrs. Perkins. She’ll probably tell you to just call her Silvia.” The thought of calling his old teacher by her first name felt like he was a dog walking around on its hind legs. Hell, he even still called Ted’s mom Mrs. Spakoffski, and he had known her nearly his whole life, spending most weekends there over the summers growing up. Emma arched a brow at him. “You can try the whole Mrs. Perkins thing, but I’m telling you, bathroom boy, she’s going to tell you to call her Silvia.”

He followed her wordlessly up to the front door. A neat brick pathway led from the driveway to the little front stoop. An addition since his paperboy days, he assumed. The yellow door, however, wasn’t. He always remembered liking the door to this house. How it was just such a happy color in an otherwise boring neighborhood. “I like your door,” he commented and immediately wanted to smack himself for letting the words leave his lips. He really needed to work on his filter before he said something he regretted.

Glancing back over her shoulder, she pinched her face at him, a small smile twisting over her lips. “You’re weird,” she decided while sticking her key into the lock in the front door. “Don’t embarrass me, nerd.” The door pushed open and he was immediately hit with the scent of some sort of food. Something sweet and cinnamon in flavor. His stomach growled, realizing he hadn’t really eaten since before they left school. “Ma! Hey! Your favorite youngest daughter is home!”

Something clattered somewhere in the house. Almost like a plastic bowl fell to the floor. A set of heavy footsteps came from somewhere beyond the foyer. All of the walls he could see were painted in soft light colors, which gave the rooms the illusion that they were really much bigger than they were in reality. A few pictures hung in the front hall. One was a painting of some flowers in light flowing colors. Another was a photograph, containing who he knew to be Mrs. Perkins with her arms wrapped around two young girls. One taller with a longer face, big blue eyes, and dark waves of hair. The other with two front teeth missing with a mop of curly hair and a pirate smile peering up at the camera.

There was no chance for him to even comment on it. When he turned to ask Emma if she still smiled like a pirate captain in pictures, he found himself watching her mother scoot down the hall to them. “Sweet girl, I’m so glad you made it safely.” Arms wrapped around Emma, a gesture which she returned. To say Emma looked like her mother was an understatement. They looked like a spot the difference game that was getting harder and harder to pick out. Like things had been changed just slightly to make them look different, but the resemblance was there and it was obvious. Silvia was small just like her daughter. No more than five feet tall with dark hair that fell in curls around her shoulders, unlike Emma who kept her hair cropped in a bob and half up most of the time. Same delicate nose and high cheekbones. Strong jawline. Oddly enough, the same hands. Ones that looked soft and gentle but well worked at the same time. Looking old and youthful all at once. Silvia pulled back to look at Emma. She rested a hand on her cheek. “Welcome home, mija.” Eyes flicked up to him, and he immediately felt his face go red. “Oh my goodness, look at you.” A hand reached out to grip Paul’s upper arm, an action Emma did frequently as they spoke. “Emma, you didn’t tell me your… friend was sweet little Paul Matthews.”

In that moment, his head could have exploded. There was no way she remembered who he was, or at least that was what he thought. Most people didn’t remember him. Only when he mentioned his last name did people have any idea who he was, and that would only lead to questions about his older brothers and what they were up to. Never him. “Um, yeah, hi, Mrs. Perkins,” he greeted, feeling every ounce of bashfulness that he could have had in his body seep through his pores.

The grip on his arm loosened and she reached up this time to pat his face lightly. “Oh, no. None of that,” she clucked. “Silvia. No formalities here.” He watched her left hand fall back to her side. The gold band he remembered back in school had disappeared, but there was still an indentation on her finger. Like she hadn’t taken the thing off for so long it had permanently marked her. “But look at you! So big and tall!” He could feel the flush burning up his neck, over his ears, and onto his cheeks. “Baby boy, what have you been up to? How is school?”

“Um, good,” he answered. This situation was still so surreal to him. In his grade school teacher’s house. Being asked questions about himself. He swallowed hard at the sudden realization that he had been hardcore sleeping with her daughter for the last couple of weeks. He could feel the sweat starting to bead on his back. “School’s good. Y’know… college and stuff.” Real smooth, Paul. He wished he could kick himself without looking like a bigger asshole than he already did.

Emma watched on, very much amused. “Paul’s a math major,” she chimed in, bringing the spotlight off of him momentarily. “You know, big brain nerd stuff, and he plays tennis.”

With a smile, Silvia beamed up at him. The same blinding grin Emma liked to wear so much. “We always knew you were a smart cookie, honey,” she assured him. “Not surprising that those parents of yours roped you into some sort of sport, though.” The grin wavered for a moment into a flash of annoyance before popping right back onto her face as she looked back at Emma. “Those Matthews boys were always getting into trouble. A whole group of knuckleheads, I’ll tell you, but this one, mija, was just an angel.”

His eyes met Emma’s for a moment. She stared at him, eyes starting to go wide like she had just pieced something together. A mischievous smile came across her face. He furrowed his brows in confusion. A very sudden change in the mood that lit up her face seemed very odd. He couldn’t understand what she was thinking. “Yeah, I’ve heard a thing or two about them,” she responded, leaving him with more questions than her face had initially. It was as though she just realized she knew a secret that he didn’t, which left him very ill at ease. “I didn’t realize I was dealing with one of them, though.”

Once more, he was left more unsure of what that could have meant, but he had a sinking feeling he was on a fast track to find out.


	10. Advanced Familial Relations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein, Emma is an adult and can have her friend Paul sleep in her bed with her without permission from her mother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry the updates have been coming out slower. It's been a funky time and life is weird, but I'm still so into this one.

Silvia’s house was comfortable. There was something warm about it that Paul never really got being in his own home, but then again, his house… his  _ parent’s _ house was anything but warm and fuzzy. It was cold. Sterile even. Things were always neatly made up and tastefully decorated. High ceilings and white walls. Newly finished wood floors and sparkling clean tiles. If he didn’t live there and someone told him no one did, he might have believed them. The Matthews household looked more like a home that was just there for show than a place where people actually existed.

This house, however, was more like a patchwork quilt. The rooms didn’t flow together quite the same way that the rooms his mother decorated did, but at the same time, they clearly all went together. Mixed and matched furniture. Big antique pieces, like a desk upstairs in what Emma explained was Jane’s room. A beautiful oak writing desk with intricate detailing on the legs. Leaves and vines wrapped around, carved into the wood. It was a stark contrast to the white Ikea bed frame on the opposite wall. The rooms were painted in soft tones. Pale yellows and blues and greens. Every room went together even if it didn’t aesthetically look that way. The house was woven together with something gentle and loving.

In the kitchen, there wasn’t expansive counter space or dazzling matching stainless steel appliances. No, it was a modest room. Enough countertop to get the job done, an oven with a fairly worn gas range, and a black refrigerator. When he had inspected the appliance, he found himself smiling. It was littered with magnets, cards, notes, and photos. Pictures of Emma and her sister as kids. Drawings from her students. Postcards from various places. In particular, one very worn one from Guatemala. A list for the grocery store that he already saw Emma add to multiple times since they had arrived. 

As a whole, the house felt lived in, which was a refreshing change of pace. Just like everything with her had been.

“Baby boy, do you like wine?”

He snapped out of whatever daze he had been in as he looked over the house. Truthfully, he hadn’t intended to analyze it so thoroughly, but he just couldn’t help himself. He had been absolutely transfixed. Much like he had been with Emma herself. He looked over at Silvia, who was watching him with a curious eye. She had been since that first meeting in the front hall. A watchful and interested gaze. “Um, no… no thank you,” he stumbled. There really was no need to be as nervous as he was. He knew Mrs. Perkins. Or rather, Ms. Reyes as he had been told after the fifth time he referred to her by her former married name. 

She tilted her head to the side. “You don’t strike me as a liquor boy,” she decided. The way she looked at him was almost as if she were studying him. Trying to size him up. It made him squirm a little. He had never gotten that sort of look before. Then again, he had never been over to a girl’s house where at least some of what went on between them was discussed with the parents ahead of time. “This little gremlin--” she gestured to Emma, who was rifling through the fridge, “--has an expensive taste for browns. She drank half a handle of an expensive whiskey once and tried to use iced tea to cover up the fact that she drank it.”

The fridge door swung shut to reveal Emma with her eyes narrowed. “You weren’t fucking drinking it,” she argued, crossing her arms over her chest. “ _ And _ iced tea matched the color better.” She looked to Paul. “She didn’t realize for like a year until one day she  _ finally _ decided to have a glass of goddamn whiskey and went on about how it tasted like ass for the next… um, forever because we’re  _ still _ fucking talking about it.”

“Mija, that was a hundred dollar bottle of Lagavulin,” Silvia shot back, clearly still exasperated with the situation that had long since passed.

Emma shrugged. “So I had great taste,” she replied. “Let it go, Ma. Can’t change the past.”

“And,” Silvia started, holding up her index finger to Emma. “You were seventeen.”

“So I had great taste  _ even _ as a seventeen year old. Doesn’t make the fact that it already happened any different.”

He tried to imagine getting caught drinking by his parents. His brothers had. Dan and Glen liked to throw parties when their parents went out of town. Usually, that would mean hours with headphones in and his bedroom door locked trying to keep his head down. Loud music and concerning crashes could be heard all night despite the lulling of the Barenaked Ladies in his ears. One time, Jack drank a significant amount of vermouth, which was gross because it was only the vermouth gone, and replaced it with water when he very well knew their mother liked to make herself a martini very frequently. Each time, though, it ended with mild chastising that would usually be concluded with a very boisterous,  _ “I suppose boys are just going to be boys.” _ He couldn’t help but think he wouldn’t have gotten as warm a reception as his older brothers.

Once more, Silvia’s attention was turned to Paul as she huffed at her daughter’s statements. “Paul,” she sighed, a smile gracing her lips again. “Do you want anything to drink? We have beer, iced tea, water--”

“I’ll, um, have a beer?” he responded more as a question than he wanted. “Please.” He felt like a little kid asking for a glass of milk. It was stupid. He was a grown man, yet there he was feeling as nervous as hell talking to his elementary school art teacher. His hand balled into a fist at his side. He was embarrassing himself. Emma’s eyes caught his, her lips quirked up in a smirk. The refrigerator opened again. Once more, the contents clattered around. She reappeared with a dark glass bottle in each of her hands. One was then outstretched to him. “Um, thank you.”

Silvia rested a hand on his arm in an effort to try and calm his nerves. At least, that was what he assumed she was trying to do. She had always been patient with him in school. He was shy and anxious as a rule. Not that it had changed too much as he got older. He was still reluctant and not the most outgoing, but he could recall the artist formerly known as Mrs. Perkins sitting with him to patiently answer questions he was too afraid to ask or give help he was too shy to request. “Well, honey, if you want anything else, you just help yourself,” she told him with a pat against his arm before she looked back at Emma. “Do you need anything at the store, Em?”

Emma pursed her lips for a moment. He found his eyes drawn to her. Something that he had found happening each time he was around her. There was this thing about her that he found himself mesmerized by that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. She was dynamic. Full of life and energy. A little snarky… okay, a lot snarky, but from the time he had spent with her, he enjoyed it. She grinned at her mother. “I don’t know what you’re getting, but if you  _ really _ loved me, you’d make--”

Eyes rolled in her direction as Silvia scooped up her keys off the kitchen counter. “Yes, Emma, I’m making you your fucking cake,” she grumbled. Her gaze moved to Paul. “Do you need anything, Paul? Have anything you want for the weekend?” He shook his head quickly. Maybe it was a little too eager. Unfortunately, no matter how much he would like to rewind certain moments to not look as dumb, he couldn’t. He just had to hope Silvia wouldn’t say anything. Instead of asking why he was acting like a complete idiot, she just smiled. “Okay.” She moved to leave the kitchen, looking at Emma over her shoulder. “Text me if you think of anything.”

With that, she was bounding back through the house. “Have fun!” Emma called after her. He could hear a snort from the front hall. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, but if you do, name it after me!” Another mumbled statement he couldn’t quite make out as the door swung open and then closed. Emma leaned back against the counter with a satisfied smirk on her face. “I’m her favorite. Don’t let anyone try to tell you otherwise.”

He thought for a moment about her mentioning having gone to therapy with her mother. How things hadn’t been good between them for a long time. It seemed strange to imagine that they had been anything less than this. It wasn’t a dynamic that should have existed between two people who had a rocky relationship for so many years. He tried to picture having something even close to that with either one of his parents. The fact that it even crossed his mind was laughable. Let alone, something like that actually coming to fruition. 

“So do you want to see where you’ll be staying?” They had dropped their bags in the living room amidst an animated conversation between Emma and Silvia about something she had been doing in school. Honestly, he forgot it was even there. Everything felt a little surreal. Like this experience wasn’t really happening, and he was about to wake up any moment to find himself hungover and alone in his apartment thinking about Jess. He stood and stared at her with wide eyes. How long had he been doing that? Had he been standing there looking like a crazy fucking goon this whole time? God dammit, Paul! Like her mother had earlier, Emma rolled her eyes, crossing the room to grasp his wrist and pull him out of the kitchen. “C’mon, nerd. Let’s go.”

The stairs at the far side of the living room were creaky as all hell. Emma had mentioned she used to sneak out of the house as a kid. He couldn’t quite understand how she managed to do that with those stairs. On the wall going upstairs, there were pictures hung. Mostly of the girls at various ages. Some of when they were children. One of the two girls wearing matching pink windbreakers. Dark curls were pulled back into side ponytails. They had their arms around each other with wide smiles and purple sunglasses over their eyes. Further up the stairs, he found two school photos. In what he assumed were each of their senior photos, Jane stared out with glaringly blue eyes and a bright wide smile. She looked vaguely familiar. Like he had ever crossed paths with her. He was fairly certain, though, he had never met this girl in his life. Dark hair was cut neatly and fell in gentle waves to her shoulders. Beside Jane’s picture hung Emma’s. She was tanned and sharp in her features. Her bright smile matched Jane’s but was almost more blinding. Eyes were lined with a soft brown around her maple syrup eyes. Her hair, unlike Jane’s, was straightened to fall around her face. Coppery blonde locks framed her jaw. It was a shock of a hair color difference. He glanced at the back of Emma’s head. Dark ringlet curls were falling out of the messy bun she had attempted to pull her bob into. He found himself smiling.

He wasn’t entirely sure what he expected from Emma’s bedroom, but the neatly kept green room was not it. The walls reminded him of a very pale lime. “Don’t judge me. I was fifteen and picked a color I thought would piss off my mom,” she said as if she had been reading his mind. A dresser with a large mirror over the top of it sat against the wall to their left. A bed stood at the opposite side of the room. A grey comforter set was nicely made atop the full mattress. It was a pretty stark change from the light sheets that appeared to never find themselves made back at her apartment. She dropped her back onto the ground and then flopped onto her back on the bed. A grin beamed up at him. “Spoiler alert: it sure fucking did.”

She kicked her shoes off and onto the floor, arms laying out wide on either side of her. That same teasing smile remained on her lips. He started to return it when a thought hit him: she was showing him where he was going to be staying. His eyebrows shot up. “Am I staying in  _ here?” _ he questioned. Her eyes narrowed at him. Perhaps he didn’t need to ask like that. “I mean, not that it would be a bad thing.” The words were spilling out of his mouth and not making him look any better as he went along. “I just… is your mom… like,  _ cool _ with that?” 

“I’m an adult, Paul,” she told him, bringing her arms up to fold her hands behind her head. “My mom isn’t going to tell me who I can have in my bed.” She rolled up and off of the bed. He watched her, unable to stop himself from running his eyes up and down her body. Shorts that were short enough that he noticed immediately when she came to pick him up. A worn out baggy white t-shirt that was covered in paint stains and just see through enough that he was fairly certain her bra was covered in tiny red hearts. She was right in front of him, smirking right up at his face. Sunkissed and bare. It was a face that he felt like he had been looking at forever. He had only known her two weeks. Her fingers twined around his. “And if I want my friend Paul to spend the weekend in my bed, then I don’t think his old art teacher is going to stop me.” His heart pounded in his chest as she pulled him back toward her bed. “Drop the bag, bathroom boy.”

Never did he think he would have been snapping to a command after being referred to as ‘bathroom boy’, but he carefully laid his bag down on the floor, having remembered he packed his laptop with the intention of getting some sort of work done. Though, he was thinking now that might be a little difficult. “Emma, your mom’s just going to the store,” he warned while she bounced back onto the bed, propping herself up on her knees to come closer to being eye to eye with him. Her hands were cool on either side of his neck. He hadn’t realized how warm he was. God, his face must have been beet red this whole time. God dammit. “And the door’s open.”

Without another word, her lips were on his. Soft. Minty like the gum she had been chewing the entire drive. He really did like kissing her, and she had very quickly caught on to that fact. For a moment, the fact that her mother could walk back into the house and see him crawling on top of her daughter disappeared. The nervous display he had put on downstairs was a distant memory. The screaming worry in the back of his mind that somehow his parents would find out he was in town and actively avoiding them silenced. It was just her and the bed quietly creaking beneath them as the AC kicked on. Just as everything around them was beginning to blend into the background, she pulled away from him, a little flushed herself. She reached down to pull her t-shirt up and over her head. From behind the white fabric, a playful smile was still perched upon her lips. “I think you’re totally underestimating Silvia’s ability to get in and out of the grocery store. There’ll be at least five parents who stop to talk to her,” she explained, sounding a little winded. “Groceries are like an hour and a half affair for this lady, so we’ve got some time.” He couldn’t help the little laugh that left him, for he had been one of those people many moons ago, who stopped her mother in the supermarket back when he was a kid. “Plus, your butt looks fucking  _ fine _ in those jeans.”

Another chuckle as he helped her pull his shirt over his head. “You got a thing for butts?” he asked through his chuckling. He leaned back down to kiss her again. She had this weird effect on him, where a lot of the silly anxious thoughts he had about so many things began to melt away. Like a pad of butter in a pan, suddenly his parents had faded from his mind and were left to cook into the backstory he was beginning to feel like she would devour at some point in the future. 

Fingers threaded through his hair and pulled him in closer to her. They both had the tendency to do that. Try and be as close to one another as humanly possible. Even if there was no more space between them, it always seemed like they could still be closer. He knocked himself down onto his elbows. His hands found either side of her face, thumbs resting on her cheeks. As if this was something they had always done. Natural. Second nature. “Yeah,” she answered into his mouth. He could feel her smile. “ _ But _ yours is extra nice.”

He backed away to look at her. Her eyes were a little tired, but that was to be expected after a long drive. However, there was something in her face that glowed a little bit more. A sense of excitement perhaps had been radiating off of her. His face pinched, but the smile didn’t fade. “Was that a butt pun?” he asked, only receiving a laugh in response. “That  _ was  _ a butt pun.”

Her arms wound around his neck, pulling him back down to her lips as he moved them both further onto the bed. Teeth dragged against his lower lip. “If you already knew that it was,” she started with her hands slipping from behind his neck to trail down his chest and over his stomach to fiddle with his belt. Her eyes caught his. Mischief and fire played well with her exhaustion in them. “Then why’d you even  _ ass _ -k.” If she hadn’t crushed her lips up against his again, he would have given her the obligatory groan, but instead, he groaned as her tongue danced along with his. His belt buckle jingled open. She grinned. “Fucking  _ nailed _ it without even looking.”

“But you look the whole time,” he shot back without even having a chance to think. She laid her head against the bed to look up at him quizzically. The realization of the joke came over her quickly, and she shook her head, grumbling something in Spanish to herself as her mouth landed back on his. “Are you mad because my joke was better than…” his words trailed off when her hand dipped below the waistband of his jeans. Honestly, even if this girl just brought him there because she had some weird fantasy of fucking someone who was basically a stranger in her childhood bedroom, he couldn’t say he’d complain too much. 

The bad part of getting so wrapped up in her was, in fact, the inability to realize what was going on around them. Including the stairs he thought would have been so hard to miss groaning through the house. The quiet clanging of keys as someone walked through the door. Quiet chatter while a pair of voices made their way through the house. When a voice cut through the thoughts focused on Emma’s hand down his pants, however, he immediately crash landed back to earth. “Emma!” the voice shouted, causing them to break away from one another. The hand instantly retracted from his jeans, much to the chagrin of the part of him that was very much still stuck in the moment. 

She looked over his shoulder before going wide eyed and jolting up, which caused him to jump, nearly falling off the bed. “Jane?” was all she could reply. He turned around, very aware of his lack of shirt and jeans that were barely still around his waist. And the older sister that was staring both of them down with her icy eyes.  _ And _ the raging boner that had yet to cut the shit. “Mom said you weren’t going to be home.”

“Yeah, I was surprising her,” Jane explained, glancing between Emma and him. He wasn’t sure he had ever been more mortified. A pillow was tossed in his direction. He looked up to find Emma gesturing with her chin to his crotch. With a nod, he complied and placed the pillow in his lap. Someone appeared behind Jane, just far away enough that he couldn’t make the face out. Jane’s eyes landed on him. “So… who’s this?”

The face behind Jane suddenly made its way into focus. Paul’s heart dropped. “Holy shit,” the man who had appeared muttered, a grin twisting onto his face the second his eyes landed on Paul. “What the hell are  _ you  _ doing here?”

Jane looked up over her shoulder at him, blue eyes catching one another. “You know him, babe?” she questioned as if she hadn’t immediately noticed how the two could have  _ possibly _ known each other.

Paul found Emma’s eyeline again and finally pieced together something she had said earlier. “Jesus fuck,” he mumbled, wishing he could fall away and disappear into the mound of pillows behind him. 

“Well, Jane, that there is my little brother,” Jack explained with the shit eating grin still on his face. If Paul could have kicked him in the face, he would have because the fact of the matter was he was Jack's _only_ little brother as they were the two youngest of the four Matthews brothers. “And it  _ appears _ that he’s totally fucking boning your sister.”

Paul had never wanted to curl up and die more than in that very moment.


	11. Lazy Sundays: Myth or Reality? (Recess I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A year ahead, Emma and Paul spend some time in bed on a lazy Sunday morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I told myself I was going to write chronologically for this, but here I am doing some little jumps. This is just a peppering in of what's to come in a year, but we'll be getting back to the present in the next chapter. I just couldn't stop thinking about writing this, so it had to be done.
> 
> I also might very well be doing something like this again, so I decided to label these bits "Recess". Like breaks in school? Get it? Oh man, I started with this schtick. Now, I can't stop myself. Send help.
> 
> Also thanks for reading, guys. I appreciate you all. <3

At some point during the night, it began to rain. Like the heavens had been the roof of a tent so laden down with water they decided to give way. Droplets ran down the large windows, racing one another to settle in a pool at the edge of the frame. The temperature was meant to drop overnight from sticky late summer heat to a comfortable autumn day. Though, the rain would make that far less comfortable and far more chilling. Soon enough, the leaves would be turning from green to a burst of red and orange. It would grow cold and dreary. The summer would wind down into fall. Then fall into winter. Just beyond the glass, Paul could feel the cold trying to sneak its way inside.

As it was, he had yet to leave the bed for more than a trip to the bathroom or the fridge. He had yet to think about going about his day. There had been plans for the day initially, but those had long gone out the window. He wasn’t even entirely sure what time it was. All he knew was that the weekend had already passed too quickly. Monday through Friday seemed to linger on like a bad taste in his mouth, but the moment Friday evening came around, time sped up, leaving whatever weekend fun had or hadn’t happened to run right by him the second he blinked.

Then again, the last year had also run away on him. Everything had passed in a high definition blur. So many things had happened and changed, but it felt like that was a million years ago. Like he was a different human than he had been a year ago. It was crazy how many things could change in a life that had been so stagnant and normal for over twenty years. He never walked out of his line. Things were easier that way, or so he thought. The barely dressed woman sauntering over to him with a slice of stiff pizza in each hand that caused his life to take a sharp left hand turn would have said otherwise.

“Alright,” Emma mused as she plopped down cross legged on the opposite side of the bed. Rather than grabbing one of her own shirts that were spilling out from dresser drawers, she had chosen to scoop the shirt he had been wearing the night before. A deep burgundy red with silver lettering. Across the chest a bold _‘Silver Oak University’_ above a set of crossed racquets. Just below the image read: _‘2017 Champions’_ above _‘Men’s Tennis’._ The sleeves were too long on her clearly, and the shirt itself hung more like a dress than an actual shirt. Down the right sleeve read _‘Matthews’._ He gave her a lazy sleepy smile. “Pepperoni or sausage?”

He reached out a hand to touch her knee. “You look good in that shirt,” he mumbled. There was no reason to feel as zonked and sleepy as he did. They had spent the better part of the day in bed, sleeping on and off. Chatting a little. In all fairness, they had been much most of Friday night talking. There was a lot of catching up to be done with a spontaneous visit. He had walked through the door and was immediately jumped before he could even put his bag down. Later on, they stood at the kitchen counter, munching on pizza as they discussed their respective weeks. Saturday night also consisted of very little sleep but not nearly as much talking. Not that either one of them would have complained.

Her face twisted in displeasure. “That’s not answering the question,” she shot back, waving the pieces of pizza around. “Pepperoni or sausage? Pick your poison, Matthews.” The exact words she had used when asking him what toppings he wanted on the pizza. Neither of them had eaten dinner. She had been holed up in her apartment with some sort of project she was putting together for that science professor. He had left work as early as he could, well aware of the two and a half, likely three, hour long drive ahead of him. The sky was almost dark when he walked into her softly lit studio. “Listen, bathroom boy, I’m going to kick your ass out if you can’t handle answering one stupid question.”

Though her words were threatening, her actions were not. She moved across the bed, expertly balancing the pizza in her hands. A smirk came over her features. The mattress sank beneath her as she threw one of her legs over him to straddle his hips. His hands, however, rested on hers right away. An instinctual movement. Second nature. “You’re going to kick me out, huh?” he repeated. His thumbs dipped underneath the shirt to run along the ridges of her hips. He glanced up at her, trying to do his best impression of the saddest puppy he could picture. “But I _just_ got here.”

She leaned down, slowly but surely, until their noses were almost touching. He could feel her breath tickling his face. The smile on her lips might as well have been up against his in that moment. His heart hammered in his chest. “Then just answer the fucking question, Paul,” she whispered. “Pepper-fucking-roni or sausage?”

Their eyes caught. It was one of his favorite things about her: her eyes. Warm and golden. Like honey being poured into a steaming cup of tea. Like the golden crust on a fresh baked loaf of bread. “You know eating in bed is pretty gross,” he muttered, pressing a chaste kiss against her lips before grabbing one of the slices out of her hand. “But also, sausage. That was a stupid question. I know you don’t like sausage… well, not on your pizza. I can think of _at least_ one that you--”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” she groaned while lifting herself off of him. She took a new perch beside him on the bed, munching at the crust. “You’re the biggest geek I’ve ever met, you know that? And I’ve met both your brother and my sister. You still take the fucking cake, you big dumb nerd.” As she crossed her legs again, her knee rested against his side, prompting him to lay his free hand over it. She tried her best to hide the grin by chewing a little more aggressively on her pizza. “But for what it’s worth, thank you. I wanted the pepperoni but was trying to be nice to you.”

“Nice to me? What’s the occasion?” he teased. She was usually nice to him. Tough always but a little softer with him. Able to ease off the jabs when he needed her to. Her mother had ever said he seemed to unlock something sweet in Emma that no one else had been able to tap into. She rolled her eyes. He didn’t try to hide his own smile. In the dreary light of the rainy Sunday. His thumb brushed over the skin on her knee. “I missed you, Em.”

This time, she let the grin come out fully over her lips. She tilted her head to the side and leaned back on the ball of her free hand in order to get a better look at him. It was something she did often while she was drawing. Eyes would narrow just slightly as if she were honing in on one detail she wanted to focus on. Sharpening the image she would be taking with the shutter of her mind. “I missed you, too,” she responded, softly this time. Her eyes were on him, scanning over him endlessly. Mapping out his entire being in that moment. As time had gone on, he had noticed the little pictures showing up on her walls. Both drawn and not. Mementos of moments filled with laughter and joy. At some point between the photos and the doodles, he began to believe the smile on his face was less of a fallacy than it seemed to him at first. Like the images were really not the fictional pieces he thought they were. “How’re the kids treating you?”

He pushed himself up to sit against the wall behind the mattress, nodding through a mouthful of pizza. “They’re kind of awesome,” he replied, stuffing the bite into the inside of one of his cheeks. “I’m grading their first real test, and, like, most of them did _really_ well.” When he was going over plans in the overstuffed binder he brought over to her place that summer, she had peered over his shoulder and chimed in here or there when some of the things just didn’t make sense. In his mind, it was easy. This was algebra. Simple as that. But she liked to remind him that not everyone had a _“big stupid math brain”_ like he did and needed some information delivered in different ways. “I know it’s only the first test, but they mostly got it. There were, like, a solid bunch of A’s in there.”

A fond smile beamed back at him. “Look at you,” she hummed, nudging him with her knee. “Mr. Goddamn Matthews is out here fucking crushing it. Mom’s probably totally fucking stoked I’m sure.” Silvia had just about lost her mind when she found out he was going to be teaching at Hatchetfield High but did suggest to not mention to anyone that he went to Sycamore. The rivalry was still strong, so he kept his Timberwolf roots a secret. Emma leaned forward and brought her voice down to an exaggerated whisper. “Just kidding, she’s absolutely fucking stoked. We were talking about it the other night. She also said you should stop in for dinner one of these nights.”

“You mean to tell me Silvia doesn’t want to hear the same three office stories Jack tells? They aren’t doing it for her anymore? What a shocker." His brother meant well, but he was ultimately a giant doofus. A little carefree and silly in his way has he distanced himself more from their parents. Paul liked to take credit for that action, but having the tough as nails Perkins women around really spearheaded that entire operation. Not that Silvia disliked Jack. She just apparently liked Paul better according to Emma, who had offhandedly said so one evening. “I’d like it better if you were there for dinner also. Your mom would, too.”

It was true. He wished that she would be there every time he stopped in to see her mom, which was more frequent than he wanted to admit. There were many an after school visit to Emma’s childhood home to sit and chit chat over food that was far better than anything he would whip up himself. Not that he couldn’t cook. He was starting to round the corner with that under the tutelage of Silvia and Emma. However, the barely functioning kitchen in his shoebox sized apartment made it difficult to do much aside from takeout and TV dinners. Those nights he found himself in the old house on Mirtis Street, he fruitlessly hoped that she would pop out of her bedroom upstairs or be sprawled out across the couch in the living room. Places where he had seen her before and wanted to see her again. There were also nights, though, where he would go directly home, dropping his car keys on the counter in the kitchen. He could almost imagine her head popping up over the couch with that smirk on her face. Or sitting with her legs pulled up underneath her at the little table he had set up in an attempt to have some sort of dining area. She was never really there, though. Not in the way his brain kept conjuring her at least.

He chomped down on his last bit of crust as she nibbled at her now crustless slice. “You eat pizza weird,” he commented through his mouthful.

Her brows shot up as she looked down at the pizza in her hand. “I like to save the best for last,” she snapped in defensive. “Besides, it’s like you eating around the fucking marshmallows when you eat Lucky Charms. That’s way weirder than eating the crust first on your pizza.”

She wasn’t wrong. It was a weird habit. One he picked up in college. He hadn’t ever been allowed to have sugary breakfast cereal as a kid, but one morning, the dining hall had been all out of Cheerios, which was mild and inoffensive as far as cereals went. So, naturally, he decided to go off of his routine and grabbed a plastic container filled with Lucky Charms. Ever since that moment, he decided the marshmallows needed to be eaten last and savored. The first time she watched him eat the cereal, she completely stopped what she was doing to stare at his odd eating habit. It was the same idea she had with eating her pizza crust before the rest of the slice but more time consuming and mildly more neurotic. 

The mouthful of pizza he swallowed settled in his gut like a rock. Tomorrow, thankfully Columbus Day and not a day off that required the staff to be in service, he would make the trek back to his sad little apartment on the island. He would go out for a bite to eat with his buddy Bill, who would talk about his young daughter, who had really tied him down to the island at the time they were graduating high school. He would talk about Bill’s wife, who had grown a little antsy but Bill still had a heart full of love to give her. Ted would come over unannounced, and they would drink a little too much. He would tell Paul about the girl he met on Tinder. A redhead who liked ABBA. 

All the while, Paul would sit there wishing he was coming home to her.

He had known her a year, and it felt like a lifetime. Like they had been in each other’s lives, giving each other shit, for their entire existence. Laughing for as long as the earth was whole. He had been so stupid to not give into it right away. “You’re my best friend, you know that, right?” he wondered quietly. With her finishing up her last year at school, the weekends they were able to spend together felt more intense. All the milestones and feelings had been condensed as the fast forward button remained on. One second, it would be teasing and silly. The next, everything was intense and filled with emotion. 

“Are you going to be this much of a sap when we live together?” she snorted. His eyebrows raised. It wasn’t something they had discussed. At least, he was pretty sure they hadn’t discussed it. Even casually, living together hadn’t been mentioned. He stared at her with wide eyes. Sometimes, he was fairly certain she could read his mind. Or they were sharing one brain. Either way, it was scary how she would just say what he was thinking out loud. The teasing grin fell from her face as she began shaking her head. “Not that we have to do that.” Words wouldn’t muster their way up from his throat. Anything he could say was stuck in his lungs. Her eyes fell to the bed between them. “I’m sorry, Paul. I know… I know we were going to take things a little slower once all that shit settled down before, and I hope it doesn’t make you feel scared or whatever but I just keep making plans. Not even anything big. Like, ‘oh, what should we get Mom for Christmas?’ Or ‘Maybe we could go up to Vermont next summer.’ Or just like… stupid things. Like I make sure to keep fucking salt and vinegar chips here because you’re a stupid sadist who likes those godforesaken things.” He couldn’t help but chuckle even though he was fairly certain his face still looked terrified. She let out a heavy sigh, dragging her eyes back up to his. “I just keep making plans, and you’re just fucking there. And I hope that’s okay.”

Okay? No one had ever made plans that specifically included him in them. Not that would go so far in advance. There wasn’t ever any ‘we’. Any ‘us’. Nothing that he would exclusively be included in, yet she was there apologizing for it. To be fair, he had requested that things move slower than they had been. It hadn’t worked out like that so far, but he _did_ ask. The thought of her wanting to live with him, though, felt exhilarating. A feeling in the pit of his stomach like right before a roller coaster dipped down off of its highest peak. “No, that’s okay,” he whispered. He didn’t mean for the statement to come out as a whisper. It was the highest volume his voice would allow in that moment. 

She took her turn to raise her eyebrows while stuffing the last bit of her pizza into her mouth. “Really?” she blurted out through the too big mouthful she had taken. He felt the smile returning to his face as he stared at her bewildered expression. Things had changed a little bit in that year. Her hair was slightly longer, not quite cropped at her chin any longer. Her eyes were more exhausted, rounding out her senior year with art projects and helping out that kooky professor of hers. Her smile, though, was warm. A campfire that was burning wildly just for him. “It’s okay if it’s not.”

“No, it is,” he reassured her, finding his voice again. He sat up straight and leaned in toward her. “You’re really planning on keeping me around, huh, Perkins?” 

The worry that had taken residence in her eyes briefly faded. She shrugged. “It drives your brother nuts that the three of us can all gang up on him. You’ve earned your keep with just that,” she explained, scooting closer to him. They sat side by side, facing each other with soft smiles on their faces. “Also that dick is fucking _bomb,_ dude.” He could tell there was a blush spreading across his cheeks, but for once in his life, he didn’t fucking care. A hand came up and rested on her cheek, pulling her lips to his. There was something electric in her kisses. Like she had just dragged her feet across a mile’s worth of carpet just to shock him. She was the one to pull away in order to knock her forehead against his, looking right into his eyes. Her face was slightly flushed, too. It reminded him of following her up a trail in the summer heat. All the glow and happiness that had washed over her had filled her face again. “Baby, I love you.”

It was not the first time she said it, nor would it be the last. But his heart still leapt in his chest all the same. “I love you, too,” he breathed without moving his eyes from hers. Gentle and sincere. Everything he had been missing for so long was right in that bed with him. He couldn’t believe it. “You do look good in that shirt, though. You should hang onto it.”

“Maybe I will,” she clucked, lips pecking his between words. “Show off my big dumb boyfriend around campus.”

No one had ever wanted to show him off either.

He smiled and kissed her again, soft and slow. 


	12. The Art of Sibling Aggravation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma and Paul hang around the fire with their siblings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'ALL I'M SO EXCITED THAT YOU LIKE JACK AND JANE BECAUSE I'M RLY INTO IT.
> 
> Anyway, I don't have much else to say aside from thank you for reading as always! :D <3
> 
> I'll also respond to comments some time tomorrow because ya girl is POOPED.

Paul wasn’t much of a whiskey drinker, but he managed to keep up with Emma by some miracle as their afternoon went on simply to numb himself to his brother’s incessant prodding. He and Jack got along well, especially as they got older. Their eldest brother, Glen Jr., was their father’s favorite. A golden child. Handsome and athletic with a mildly functioning brain. He was everything their dad wanted in a son, and as luck would have it, perfection came first out of the four boys. Their mother was fondest of the second oldest, Dan. He was more sensible than Glen was. A little more mild mannered in his way. Smoother and smarter than his predecessor. Their mother liked that, but this left Jack and Paul desperate for their parent’s affections one way or another to no avail. No matter how much Jack excelled at baseball or Paul in tennis, it wasn’t ever quite enough. They didn’t have the beautiful model wives or careers of their brothers. The natural charisma that just left people drawn to them. In Paul’s case, he had their grandmother, who had taken to him early on. Like their parents, she had clearly picked a favorite, which left Jack all by his lonesome.

Seeing Jack in the patchwork house, though, was like seeing a whole different person. There wasn’t the quiet reluctance he knew so well and regularly saw in himself. Even when they had both been home with previous girlfriends, there was still something very familiar in Jack. Something more timid and mild about him. This time, Paul found his brother confident and filled with smiles. It was strange, and he didn’t know what to make of it. This was not the brother he knew. Then again, maybe he should have been changing too. Jess’s voice in the back of his head telling him what a miserable douche he was grew louder as the days went on.

Throughout the entire afternoon, he watched his brother with his girlfriend. Emma’s sister. Jane. The Jane he had heard two sides of. The woman who was in a terrible car accident where she lost part of the day. The sister who was knee deep in medical school. The smart one. The nice one. The good one. Conversely, Jack had also talked his ear off about the illusive girlfriend Paul seemed to never have the chance to meet. The girl who amazed him daily with her strength and determination. The woman who never failed to make him laugh with a raunchy joke. The person who managed to pick him up out of his pits of despair and got him back on his feet. 

Paul gazed across the fire they had started in a small pit in the backyard. Over the crackling of the fire and the soft music playing on a speaker someone had brought outside, he couldn’t hear what was being said across the fire, but he could see it clearly. Jack’s arm was wrapped around Jane’s shoulders as it had been most of the evening. A lot of quiet touches. Absentminded touches. The orange glow licked at their faces, illuminating their smiles in a soft warm light. Jack leaned down to whisper something in Jane’s ear. In turn, she smacked his chest lightly with a laugh. “Hey.” Emma knocked into his side, startling him. He had retreated so far into his mind that he forgot she was sitting next to him. He glanced down to take in her face in the firelight. Like some sort of golden elf he could have seen dancing around those flames. An impish creature. Mischief twisted around in her eyes. “You want to go fill their shoes with shaving cream or something?”

He furrowed his brows. His brother was blending into the background as Emma came into focus. Tunnel vision was consuming him. “Shaving cream?” he wondered. It seemed a strange thing to put in someone’s shoes. Not that he had ever put anything into anyone’s shoes as a prank, which seemed to be the direction she was going in. “Um… no, I don’t… why shaving cream?”

She shrugged before taking a sip from the beer bottle in her hand. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “It was pretty harmless but really got the job done as far as pissing someone off went. I got Jane at least… seven times throughout our entire childhood.” His eyebrows raised. He was almost impressed. “Yeah, man, I was a little shit.”

“Yeah, you were,” Jane called out. They both looked over at her with shock on their faces. An eye roll came in response. “Emma, you’re the loudest person I’ve ever met. It’s not like you’re being slick.” She resituated herself to lean into Jack. The arm around her shoulders fell over the top of her chest. He leaned down and pressed a kiss into her hair. Her attention turned to Paul. “Paul, she used to do all sorts of shit. Not just the shaving cream. That one was harmless. One time, she got up in the middle of the night to replace the toilet paper in our bathroom with duct tape and then taped a picture of Jigsaw above it.” Jack snorted. She glared up at him. “It’s not funny.”

“But I mean… Jane, it’s kind of funny,” he insisted, looking over to Emma and then back down to a fuming Jane. “Listen, me and Paul used to get absolutely fucking demolished by our brothers.” Paul peeked over at Emma who was watching him carefully. He, once more, wished he could have disappeared completely. “One time our oldest brother shaved half of Paul’s head when he passed out on the couch. Eyebrow and all. And then another time they came in freaking out because they said there was someone robbing the house. They went out and got glass to smash all along one of the windows. I lost my mind so bad I cried in the corner of an hour.”

Emma’s face twisted with concern. “That’s… fucking awful.” She glanced over at Paul with a sense of pity in her eyes that made him squirm. Normally, a person had to reach at least a level nine friendship to unlock his terrible childhood. At minimum, two years had to go by before he admitted to anything that went on when he was a kid. Even then, he was hesitant, yet once again, he found himself knee deep in personal bullshit just weeks into knowing something. His stomach tied itself in knots. “So your brother hasn’t met your girlfriend of, like… how long now?” 

A change of topic. His eyes met hers, and she gave him a sorry smile. Apologetic. The knot in his stomach felt like it was rising up his throat. While Jane and Jack looked at each other as they used their combined brains to calculate just how long they had been dating, Emma’s hand dipped down to squeeze his gently. A quick and subtle action that made his heart hammer in his chest. “A year and a half,” Jane decided with a grin. It had taken Paul until they went outside to even notice the prosthetic. A piece of metal and hard plastic that made her look more like a cyborg than anything else. She walked with a kind of grace he wouldn’t have expected from someone missing part of their leg. “He just hasn’t brought me home yet.”

Jack rolled his eyes but clearly was beginning to feel the discomfort Paul was wallowing in. “Why would we go visit Glen and Astrid when we could just hang out here with Silvia?” he groaned, leaning his head against the back of the patio couch they were sprawled out on. Paul was well aware that Jack loved being home with their parents just as much as he did, though up until recently, he felt a little more obligated than Paul to make appearances. Judging by the fact that he didn’t even know about Jane until that afternoon, he figured Jack had made the decision to avoid the family like the plague. “I mean, fuck, I’ll even hang out with Michael while we’re at it.”

Emm’s fingers curled around the cushion she was sitting on. Paul watched her bite the inside of her cheek as she stared out across the fire. He hadn’t heard much about her father aside from the casual remark that he and her mother had gotten a divorce. Then there was no mention of him. All he knew was that there was enough wrong there that she didn’t want to bring him up again and that the divorce was deep enough that a teacher who had been at her school for years still adamantly changed her name back to her maiden name. “Well, I’m sure Silvia would be happier to have you,” Jane hummed, gripping Jack’s chin between her thumb and forefinger. The smile returned to his face. There was a whisper of a beard starting that made white teeth pop even further. Honestly, Paul had never seen this Jack before. It was unprecedented. She looked back over the fire at them, her hand falling from Jack’s chin. “He was working at the physical therapy office I went to after the accident.” 

The explanation was simple and gave Paul a better timeline as to when this all happened. After college, Jack had picked up a number of quick jobs. A cashier at the local grocery store for a while. A dog walker around the Pinebrook area. Then finally two reception jobs. One at the local gym and finally at the physical therapist’s office. He attributed it to his winning personality and boyish good looks. Paul was pretty sure they were just desperate for help, but all in all, Jack did excel in roles that dealt with people. He had a likable way about him. Probably the most charismatic of all four brothers. Perhaps it was his boyish good looks, but probably not.

“Yep, and then she asked me out to dinner because I could  _ not _ do that,” Jack announced proudly. “Because that would be a violation of privacy laws!” The grin he wore was one Paul could only recall from their childhood. Spending hours out in their grandmother’s backyard. Pretending they were pirates. Following the marching line of ants return to their hill. Quietly discussing constellations with their grandmother. It had been many summers since they spent any significant amount of time with her. Paul couldn’t even remember the last time he had called her. “And I’m nothing if not a good law-abiding boy.”

“Jack, you’re almost twenty-seven,” Paul scoffed without being able to stop himself. Even as they grew into adults, Jack never seemed to lose his sense of wonder. There was always something to be excited and goofy about. He couldn’t quite understand it. Maybe Paul had just been serious his entire life, but his brother’s carefree nature felt so far off from anything that made sense to come out of their horrible household.

A middle finger raised in Paul’s direction. “Fuck you, Paul. I can be a little boy if I want to,” Jack argued, eliciting a laugh from his little brother. A genuine one. The first one he really let out since Jack and Jane had walked in on them earlier in the day. “Right, Jane?”

“Nope, you’re gross, and I want nothing to do with you now,” Jane dead-panned, which got a chuckle out of both Paul and Emma. The response prompted her to glance between the two. She gestured to them with her pinky and thumb. “So how long’s this thing been going on?”

The question he was fairly certain neither one of them had hoped to be asked. It would have just been easier to go about the conversation about Jack and Jane. In fact, he was just about ready to try and turn it back on them when Emma looked over to him. “Oh, well… you know,” she replied, drawing each word out longer than necessary. Her eyes darted around his face desperate for him to come in and save the day.

“Um… yeah… a couple weeks?” he offered, instantly receiving a glare. His eyes went wide as he threw his hands up in defense. “What was I going to do? Lie to them? What did you want me to say?”

She reached out and smacked his shoulder. “I don’t know. Not fucking  _ that!” _ she hollered, but there was a hint of a smile on her face. Just barely like she was trying very hard to be serious but was finding it difficult to do. “Now, they’re going to think I’m some sort of idiot for bringing some dude home who I’ve only known--”

“Oh shit,” Jane gasped as though she just put the last piece of a puzzle into its spot. She looked to Emma but pointed at Paul. “ _ This _ is the guy who fucks?” Fire burned wildly across his face. A blush had rolled up his neck and over his ears. He was sure of it. Fingers crossed, he seriously hoped the glow of the fire covered it up enough for Jack not to take notice. “The one with the--”

“I’m going to pee,” he interjected, pushing up from his seat. He glanced down at Emma, who was staring back up at him. “Do you need anything?” It wasn’t something he had intended on asking. Just like a lot of things with her, the question had just been a reflex. Like he wanted to make sure she was all good all the time. He swallowed hard when she shook her head and bit back a smile by biting down on her lip. Her eyes looked like a sweet cinnamon in the light of the fire, and in that moment, he wished he could just kiss her full on the lips. “Okay.”

The house was dark and quiet. Silvia hadn’t cancelled her plans for the evening. Something about dinner and drinks with friends and that she would be home late. Also there were directions in there specifically about not burning the house down, to which both girls rolled their eyes and begrudgingly agreed. It made him wonder what those two sweet little girls could have possibly gotten up to with their sweet faces and innocent eyes. The image of mischief in the form of fire, though, didn’t seem too far off based upon actually meeting them. Both Perkins girls were sharp and funny. A little mean sometimes. Just the sort of duo that would get into trouble, wherein Jane started something and Emma came in to finish the job.

Downstairs, the bathroom was narrow. Like a large closet that had a toilet and a sink in it. Truthfully, he didn’t need to use the bathroom. He just needed to get away before his head exploded from embarrassment. Not that anything terrible had been said about him. In fact, he was pretty sure he was being complimented in some weird way. It was all just a little overwhelming. It was like the feeling he got when he found out she had been telling her mom about him but tripled and given more anxiety. He didn’t know how to act in this newfound relationship anyway. Let alone, how to act around her with both his brother and her sister there with eyes peeled on them constantly.

He turned one of the knobs for the faucet. Cold water splashed into the sink. He looked up into the small mirror above the running water. His face was beet red. Almost like he had been in the sun all day or just ran a marathon. Neither of which were things he had done that day. Instead, he found himself in a very strange situation with his brother, his brother’s girlfriend, and a girl he was sleeping with whose sister just so happened to be said brother’s girlfriend. He stared at his reflection. Sometimes, he didn’t even recognize himself. It was like he blinked and went from some scared bug-eyed kid to an anxious tired man.

Dipping his hands under the running water, he savored the feeling of the cold water. The same feeling as letting the cool water of the hose run over his head as Jack held it high above him on a summer day in their grandmother’s backyard, laughing about some silly thing they had decided to focus on that day in the blistering heat. Calming. Soothing. He touched his cool wet hands to his face, hoping to bring down the blush on his cheeks. 

In his pocket, his phone buzzed. Then again. And again.

He pulled his hands from his face, brows furrowed. Unless Ted was drunk, which was entirely possible, there was no one who called him ever. Except maybe his mother to badger him about how he hadn’t called since going back to school, but it was a little late for Astrid Matthews to be up his ass about things. He fished his phone out of his pocket, and if it was possible, his heart dropped and leapt into his throat all at once. Lifting the phone to his ear, he cleared his throat. “Hello?” he greeted quietly.

_ “Hey.” _

He blinked. His reflection had turned an even brighter pink than before. Internally, he groaned. The voice on the other side of the phone was wavering, sniffling ever so slightly. “Is… um, everything okay?” he asked, scratching the back of his neck.

_ “I… I don’t know, Paul. Everything is… are you around?” _

Once more, his heart was pounding in his chest. “No… I’m, um, home actually,” he admitted, but for once that day, he almost wished he wasn’t. “Do you… what’s up?”

_ “Oh… nothing. I’m just… things are weird right now. I was hoping we could talk. You don’t usually go home.” _

With puffed out cheeks, he backed against the wall opposite the still running sink. “Talk?” he repeated. He ran a hand through his hair. “Talk about what?” If he had been a bigger man, a stronger man, he might have been angry, assuming the call was meant to play with his emotions, but as it was, he felt some sort of twisted excitement. It felt wrong, though. Like something bad was twisting up through his veins and around his bones. A boa constrictor tightening around his heart.

_ “Well… I don’t know. Maybe we could talk when you get back? Grab coffee or something?” _

He swallowed hard. It was everything he had wanted a few weeks ago, and a part of him still very much wanted what was unfolding on his phone. The other smaller bit of him just wanted to hang up. To put the whole thing to bed, but he wouldn’t. “I mean… I don’t know,” he sighed, squeezing his eyes shut. There was finally a different image on the backs of his eyelids. A teasing smile and a set of warm eyes. “I don’t know.”

_ “Oh, uh, okay. Just… let me know when you get back then, okay?” _

“Um, sure,” he said, feeling concerned about what might unfold if he did. “Yeah, okay.”

_ “Okay… well, bye.” _

“Bye.” His hand holding his phone dropped from his cheek as  _ Jess _ with a trail of hearts faded from the screen. The phone shook. Or maybe it was his hands. He shoved the phone back into his pocket quickly, as if the device had scalded his palm. The knob for the faucet was cold beneath his grasp. Everything was hot around him. Like he might either cry or throw up. Maybe both. He balled his hand into a fist. Fingernails pressed half moons into his palms. “Okay,” he whispered, pressing his eyes closed once more. “Okay.” Jess was there again. Looking angry. Looking upset. Looking sad. “Okay.”

Opening his eyes, he turned toward the door. He took a deep breath in with his hand on the doorknob. It was time to play it cool. Like nothing had happened. He turned the gold doorknob. Right outside the door, Emma stood looking down at her own phone deep in concentration. His heart raised to his chest, startled. She glanced up at him but not with the arched brow she would normally respond with. Instead, it was a look of concern. “You okay?” she asked as she shoved her phone back in her pocket. “I heard you on the phone and… is everything alright?”

His heart was smacking hard against his ribs. “I… yeah, fine,” he lied. It was a straight up lie. “Ted’s drunk and wanted to talk. I told him we could talk later.” Another lie. Why did he lie to her? That was dumb. She knew about Jess. 

Her eyes scanned over his face, narrowing at his words. “Okay,” she responded. “Weird way to respond to your buddy being drunk, but okay.” The worry began to melt from her face. “Pizza’s here, and your brother is interrogating me about our sex life.” The term  _ ‘our’ _ made the blush come back full force. He must have been staring at her with all the fervor of that blush as well because she cracked a smile. “What’s fucking up with you?”

Without another word, his hands were on her cheeks, pulling her lips up to his. He would have tried to be conscientious about their height difference normally, but at the moment, he didn’t really care. All he wanted was to not think about what was going on in the outside world. Just wanted a weekend of distraction and relaxation. To enjoy her for just a minute in time before it was all gone. 


	13. Remedial Dishonesty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paul can't sleep again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, friends! I hope everyone who was celebrating had a good holiday.
> 
> I found myself in the midst of some personal stuff this past week, so our love birds had to take a backseat while I dealt with that. But things seem to be in an upswing now!

Trying to sleep was pointless. Paul’s eyes wouldn’t even shut. The bedroom was pitch black and mostly silent. Groans and creaks came from the house itself as it settled for the night. Normally, that would have made him uptight. Any sound that came from the shadows would send him reeling into a vortex of worst case scenarios. Most of them ended in his brutal murder. Or at the very least it usually included general terror, whether it be administered by the hand of a murderer or a demon. However, he simply found himself awake because of other anxieties.

Emma was splayed out on her bed beside him. Hair was spread out everywhere. A sea of curls against a backsplash of lavender sheets. He turned his head to look at her. Sleeping quietly with her mouth slightly ajar. Two weeks earlier he had done the same thing in her apartment. Though, honestly, two weeks felt like a year. Like he had known her since the days she would have been sleeping in this very bed. It didn’t seem real to him. Certainly, it wasn't something that really happened to people. What this was had to be infatuation. He was so wrapped up in the idea of this girl that he felt like his heart was going to fly out of his chest. All this was just a desperate attempt to forget Jess.

Who called him.

Who wanted to talk to him.

He turned again to stare up at the ceiling with his head flat against the pillow. God, what was he even doing? Why did he come back here? He ran a hand over his face. Everything that was going on was unprecedented for him. Paul was not a person who went off his routine. Paul was not a person who took risks. Paul was not a person who went home with a girl he had only known for two weeks. So who the hell was this making these choices for him? If he could have groaned without possibly waking up his sleeping companion, he would have done so loudly.

His stomach tied into knots with each thought that passed through his brain. The thing they had going on turning sour. Her looking at him like he was some piece of shit. Disdain in her eyes. Pain in her heart. Why did he care so much? It wasn’t like he would even have to see her again if things went south. Literally, he could have gone through the rest of his life without ever worrying about running into her if he wanted, but he didn’t want that. He wanted to see her. But Jess also wanted to talk to him. About what he couldn’t be sure. She sounded… not like herself on the phone. Sad. Distressed maybe. Which confused him because she always said that he wasn’t the most comforting person when she was upset. He didn’t know what to do or say to make things better, so he just… didn’t. Later, he discovered that was not the correct thing to do, and, in fact, just made most situations worse.

“You have a habit of waking up and staring at the ceiling, weirdo?” The sound of Emma’s voice startled him, sending his heart hammering even harder against his chest. Once more, he turned to the sound of her voice. She was facing him now, laying on her side with one of her arms thrown over her head. In the moonlight, her red t-shirt looked brown. Oddly enough, it was strange to wake up next to her iclothed. Not seeing her skin glowing in the light of the moon. Having to get up close to her to see the sprinkling of freckles that littered her face. It wasn’t a bad feeling. Just strange. Like he was staying with his girlfriend (which she was not) at her mother’s house, and they had to keep it PG in case anyone walked in. “What’s shaking, big brain?”

As much as he tried to stop the smile from coming across his lips, he couldn’t stop a slight grin. “Nothing,” he finally replied. He knew it wasn’t very convincing, but he hoped she would either be still drunk enough from the night before or too tired to call him on it. The pinched face she gave him in response said that she most certainly was about to do just that. “What? I just couldn’t sleep.”

“You look like you’re thinking about something,” she stated plainly as a response. How did she do that? Read him like a book. He didn’t allow people in as a general rule, so her seemingly able to figure him out so easily was downright bizarre. She stared out at him, one eye squeezed shut. Probably wishing she was still asleep instead of dealing with his anxious bullshit. She scooted closer to him. He could feel the heat radiating off of her. His breath hitched in his throat. “What’s up?”

What  _ was _ up? His ex-girlfriend had called him unprompted. He was laying in bed with a girl he barely knew but felt like he did. The entire world felt like it was coming down around him. Also he was back in Hatchetfield. His parents were just across town. That was dreadful in and of itself. There were so many things whipping around his head. None of which he would share with her. “Nothing,” he insisted. It was a stupid answer. He was well aware that she wasn’t going to buy it, and by the unamused look on her face, he found himself ready to back pedal fast. At the same time, though, he didn’t feel like he needed to. It was as though he could just tell her anything even if he knew very well that he could not. There was no feasible way he could justify lying about talking to Jess earlier in the bathroom. To begin with, there had been no real explanation for why he lied about it. Why he lied to her. He stared over at her in the dark. Somewhere in his mind, he was wondering what it would be like to come back again for Thanksgiving and New Years. Maybe even just an entire weekend here and there. With her. In a comfortable space. “I was just thinking.”

She clicked her tongue. The ball of her hand pushed against her closed eye to wipe away the sleep slightly.  _ “Okay,” _ she started. Her hand dropped from her face to his chest. A natural movement. Like she had been casually touching him for so long. There had been moments where things felt so normal that it made him squirm. A girl he didn’t really know made him feel more at home than the one he had dated for well over a year did the entire length of the relationship. “What’re you thinking about?”

His options mulled over in his mind. He could have lied again. That would have been the easiest option. Tell her school is weighing on his mind. That his sleep schedule was already so fucked he was just up and left worrying about any unfinished work. Or that sometimes memories of stupid things he said as a twelve year old would ring out in the quiet of his dreams and startle him awake to the point where he would just lay around panicking about the people who had been around him remembering his stupidity. To be fair, none of that would be a lie. There was constant anxiety buzzing around in his head. A fly trapped in a room on a hot summer day. Zipping around the space. Hiding behind blinds until the moment a sweet piece of juicy fruit came into view. 

Their eyes met. The moon was beginning to wane, but he could just about make out the outline of her features in the shadows. That oddly captivating face. Long and sharp. A mischievous grin that cut through him every time he had seen it. The warmest eyes he had ever seen. A part of him just wanted to get lost in the chocolate pools forever. “You,” he whispered, halfway hoping she wouldn’t hear him. Halfway hoping she would. It wasn’t a lie. Just a very abridged version of the truth. “What happens when things go… all fucking belly up here?” The words just tumbled out of his mouth. He couldn’t stop them around her. Every stupid thought that was in his head was bound to reveal itself to her, which was a very concerning way for him to be. 

He imagined her brows furrowed at his words. No idea why he was saying what he was saying. Because they had only been seeing each other for two weeks. Though seeing each other was a relative term. They had certainly  _ seen _ a lot of each other, but it wasn’t as though they were  _ seeing _ each other. Although, that little ice cream escapade the weekend before could have definitely been considered a date. And he  _ was _ with her at her mother’s house for a long weekend. Had he found himself dating this girl? It had only been a little over a month since Jess dumped him. What the fuck was he doing?

The bed dipped down beside him as she curled against his side. “Well, we could just enjoy now instead of worrying about that shit,” she offered. “Because I’m having a good time, and it seems like you are, too.” He hummed in response. “Unless I’m totally reading this situation wrong.”

“No, no!” he spat out before she could continue. Because he was. He was very much enjoying their time together. Almost too much really. He thought about that first night up in her apartment, thinking about how her face looked in the dim lighting. How she smiled at him and told him about her cat and classes as the night went on. How he didn’t think about Jess for the majority of that night. Just the perfect teeth in her shit eating grin. The twinkling in her eyes when she looked at him. Honestly, also the ass in her jeans, but that was neither here nor there. It was possible to be attracted to someone without having the heart get tangled in the middle, which was not whatever was going on between them. Whatever  _ they _ were. “I am.”

The hand on his chest curled into a fist, fingertips dragging against his t-shirt in the process. “Okay, Paul, here’s the deal,” she stated flatly. With her head propped up in her hand, he could make out her face just a little more. Bare and tired. Her nose ring glinted in the minimal moonlight. “I like you.” His eyebrows shot up, and he hoped like hell she could see less of him than he could see of her. There it was. The words he had quietly been dreading, yet they brought a spark of excitement into his gut. “And given the opportunity, I would  _ absolutely _ date the everloving  _ fuck _ out of you, but--”

The statement hit him like a punch to the stomach. Hard. Rough. He didn’t want to  _ date _ anyone right at that moment. Truthfully, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to date Jess again, which was a shocking revelation to him. He couldn’t be sure what he would say if she came up to his face and asked him to start back up again, but in that moment away from her, he couldn’t say he entirely wanted to go back. “Emma, I can’t--”

_ “But,” _ she continued through his interruption. His mouth hung a little slack as she continued. Something in her eyes had twisted from their usual twinkling. Something a little sad. Confused even. “If you weren’t down for that, I’m happy just doing this thing.” A part of him didn’t believe her. Just like she hadn’t believed his stupid responses before, but he couldn’t bring himself to question it like she did. Instead, he found himself wrapping an arm around her back. A hand laid out flat against her back. The fist against his chest followed suit, thumb rubbing against the fabric of his shirt. “Because I like being around you, and if this is how it’s gotta be to do that, then I’m down to fucking clown, dude. Just… I don’t know. See where it fucking goes, man.”

A laugh left him despite the overall dread that had been filling his chest. She did make him laugh a lot. Even when she texted him throughout the week, he found himself smiling. She just said the stupidest and most ridiculous things, and he secretly wondered if she just knew what would make him laugh. Like an ugly cackle to himself in his bedroom as he studied. “Okay,” he sighed before lips landed on his. That first night, he thought to himself that if the timing had been different he would have fallen in love with her then and there. However, on this night, he found his heart pleading with him to ignore the timing. All the while, his head was beating it back down with a lead calendar as a heavy reminder that time was flying by and dragging all at once. “I like being around you, too.”

He could feel her smiling against his lips. “You could always come and hang out during the week,” she offered. She pulled away to look at him through the dark. Her eyes felt like a spotlight shining right down onto him. “Not like anything crazy. Just… like friends hanging out. My place is pretty great for studying.” He had enjoyed the quiet he experienced at her apartment. There was a sense of peace that existed in her little plant sanctuary that he was attracted to. “I put headphones in, and I’m fucking gone. So I wouldn’t bother you.” A beat of silence passed between them. “Not that you’d have to do that. We could also hang out somewhere else. With other people, too, if you’d like. I don’t fucking care.”

That was another lie, and he could tell. She did care. He somehow knew she cared, but he wasn’t ready to dig down into the fallacies in her statement. “I think I’d like that,” he replied instead. Because he was going to like that. Because he enjoyed her presence. The pure magnetism he felt around her. Perhaps, that was just how she was. A pied piper that pulled everyone to her, though it seemed unlikely. She was enchanting, but somehow, he didn’t find that Ted was drawn to her. Jack had never mentioned her in his chatter about Jane. There was something that particularly drew him in.  _ That  _ was a terrifying thing to admit. Being drawn to someone beyond his control. “I could get into that.”

Another chaste kiss pressed against his mouth. A sweet bolt of electricity coursed through his veins. “Nice,” she breathed as she shimmied down into the crook of his arm. She was small against him and fit nicely curled into his side. His arm around her felt right in some way that he couldn’t define. “Now, as much fun as this has been, I’m going back to fucking sleep.”

Her arm wrapped around his middle like a seatbelt clicking into place. Like he was safe where he was in that moment. It didn’t matter what was going on back at school. What was going on across town. No matter what it was, for just that second, he felt like she had his back in a way most people didn’t. She was some protective force that was warding away anything bad that was rushing toward him. His arm tightened around her back. “Okay,” he muttered. He wished he could envelope this feeling and save it for later when he inevitably had a meltdown over wondering what the fuck they were doing. What he was going to do about Jess. He wanted to save this little pocket of comfort that had brought him down from the buzzing anxiety to some place where he might actually have been able to fall asleep. “Goodnight, Em.”

His eyes slid shut. Behind them an involuntary movie of them played. A montage of fucking around at school. Hanging around her apartment. Out on the quad. Laid out on a blanket on one of the many large patches of lawn on campus. Laughing as he sat with his nose in a book and she laid in his lap on her phone. Coming back to Silvia’s house. Sitting with her in his lap as they shot this shit with his brother and her sister. Quietly coming back up to the very room they were about to be falling asleep in at the end of the night. Kissing her softly with feeling. He tried desperately to fight the smile peeking out on his lips. 

She shifted slightly to press a kiss against his chest before nuzzling back into his side. A sweet and soft gesture he wasn’t used to receiving. Most of the gentle and romantic gestures she had directed toward him made him a little nervous. She touched him a lot while she talked. Hands. Arms. Chest. She liked to grip his upper arm when she laughed. There was plenty of nudging into him when they walked. Playful and silly. And then at night, she seemed to always want to be near him. He would wake up with their hands very loosely tangled or with her wrapped around his back. “Night, Paul,” she murmured against his shirt. He could feel her lips just barely move with her words.

He squeezed his eyes shut, keeping this moment clear in his memories. Just in case things were ripped out from under them. So there was one good moment he could tuck himself in with each lonely night thereafter. Something warm and wonderful to keep him through the cold winter he would spend alone. A piece to remind him of the things that could have been if their paths had crossed at a different time. He sunk against the pillow further. 

For now, he would sleep a short while with her, warm against his side. He would wake up, and she would be there. He would enjoy what they had happening between them. He would just see where it went.

As luck would have it, not a single image against his eyelids contained Jess, and he slept soundly even if only for a little while.


	14. Contemporary Emotional Instability

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paul and Emma have a brief discussion about mental health

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lil content warning here: there are discussions of depression and anxiety and light mentions of childhood trauma. Just a heads up, y'all.

The meds didn’t always help too much.

At first, they were a miracle come to life. Like some sort of wave had come over Paul’s life to gently sweep the troubles out of his mind. He slept well for the first time… maybe ever. For hours every single night. A minor inconvenience could cross his path without causing his entire world to come crashing down. Random flashbacks starring every stupid thing he had ever said or done didn’t play the part of an ax murderer popping out at a haunted house. Things felt peaceful for a time.

But then the nightmares started again. He had suffered from them ever since he was a little boy. There wasn’t anything in particular he could ever draw from the dreams. Just that there was an overwhelming darkness. In fact, that was often all he could remember. He would wake up gasping for air as though someone had been holding a pillow over his face. After the tears he would wake up with as a child were steamrolled out of him by his parents, he found himself wishing someone had been smothering him half the time. It would have made everything a little easier.

The therapist he found using the college provided insurance assured him that adjustments to medications were normal. Weekly sessions drolled on about the same things. School. His parents. Sports. His brothers. A complete lack of control in his life. His inability to get a good night’s sleep. The psychiatrist repeatedly explained that there was nothing wrong with him. That this was common. That he was one in sixteen million adults who were struggling with the same thing he was. That there was no shame in trying to treat something that wasn’t going away anytime soon. So why did he hide the little amber vials he picked up monthly from CVS? Why did he desperately try to find any possible way to make it seem like he was a completely functional human without the aid of pills? 

Jess had found out relatively early on in their relationship and had been surprisingly gentle. He supposed that was one of the reasons why he had loved her. She checked in on him every so often when they hadn’t been able to see each other. Held onto him as he melted down over some piece of childhood trauma driftwood that had floated to the surface of the pools in his mind. Stayed up late talking quietly with him about how terrible the world was and how everything seemed to boil down to something awful. She would kiss him in the dark of his dorm room, holding his face in her cool hands.  _ “That brain of yours just doesn’t stop, does it?” _

Now, Emma hadn’t meant to ignite some horrible fire of regret in his gut. Logically, he was very aware of that. Painfully. But that didn’t stop the vines of Jessica Sanders to creep in and constrict around his heart like a snake deep in the jungle. “Your brain doesn’t ever stop, huh?” she muttered after peeking a single eye open at him the soft pink light of the sunrise slipping through the windows. He had been awake for what seemed like hours, but was likely much shorter of a period of time than that. A lump rose in his throat. The same one that came up when he curled his fists against his knees when the therapist would psychoanalyze him. When his mother talked about his older brothers being greater than he would ever be. When he found out Jess had a new boyfriend already. “You good, dude?”

He couldn’t turn to look at Emma. His head was locked into place, afraid that if he met her gaze the floodgates might have broken. He could see her out of the corner of his eye, though, as his stare darted around her green bedroom. She was curled up on her side. Her head was just tilted upward enough to stare right at him. Eyebrows were furrowed. Eyes narrowed. There was concern radiating off of her. “Listen, I get it,” she said quietly, stretching her legs out. “Shit is hard. Me and Mom still do the whole therapy thing once a month. Sometimes twice. I’ve got this… anger thing.” This time, he did turn to glance at her. Not fully. Just enough to let her know he was listening. She looked exhausted. Like his restless night of sleep (or lack thereof) had seeped onto her by osmosis or something. “And, y’know, I’ve been taking Adderall since I was, like, twelve.” His cheek fell onto the pillow below his head at her words. The lump stood still in his throat. Her eyes had drifted to the bed between them, eyebrows raised as she continued speaking. “Which I thought was just a way for my parents to dull down any issues I was having that were caused by them. Turns out, though, that shit does wonders for ADHD.” A silent chuckle came out as a huff through his nose. “We’re all kind of fucked up, man.” Eyes flicked back up to his. “Also your drugs fell out of your bag yesterday when you went to brush your teeth.” His eyes went wide as she tucked her chin into the comforter. “You ever think about smoking weed? It’s done fucking wonders for me.”

“I… um…” The words were stuck on the tears waiting to roll down his cheeks. She was very candid with him considering she barely knew him. There was an openness about her that he really appreciated. Especially given the fact that he was the exact opposite. Something about her ability to just talk about things was comforting. “No, thank you,” he replied in a whisper. In his mind, he had imagined her giving a soft sleepy grin in response to his words. However, that was not how she reacted. In fact, she hadn’t moved at all. Her eyes remained firmly planted on his face. 

If only he had met her a year and a half earlier. He could have been laying in her bed discussing how fucked up they were, actually participating in the conversation rather than just staring out at her. Holding onto her without the thought of heartbreak tugging him back. It was all so stupid. “Your shitty childhood doesn’t mean you’re defective, though.” He clenched his jaw, swallowing hard to keep the lump from coming up at him. “A little messed up, maybe, but who fucking cares?” Jess did. “Anyone who says they aren’t a little fucked up in the head is telling lies and vicious rumors.” Jess was normal and had her shit together. “And also your brothers sound like absolute pieces of shit. Do you want me to beat them up for you?”

A small close lipped smile came across his lips. “No, that’s okay,” he told her softly. In all honesty, he would have paid to see her fight either of his two eldest brothers. Maybe ever a verbal sparring match with Jack, but he was just so easy to get going. He felt a droplet roll down and over the bridge of his nose. Panicked, his hand flew up to frantically wipe the tear away, but mid-movement, she had shifted to scoot closer to him, coming right into the path his hand was taking. The back of his hand bopped right into her chin, sending her lurching back. “Oh my god.” If there had been tears, they were retracting right into his eyes. Or at least he thought they should have been. “I am  _ so  _ sorry, Emma. Oh my god. I didn’t mean--”

Her hand rested at the base of her chin where his hand had just made contact, but she just gave him a wry grin. “You’re a fucking dork,” she muttered before using the hand that was on her chin to yank his down from his eyes. “Beating me up when I’m just trying to emotionally fucking connect with you. Jeez, didn’t take you for an asshole.”

He stared at her wide eyed. “I wasn’t trying to beat you up. I swear--”

“Pfft, I know that,” she snorted, cuddling in closer to him. They laid there nose to nose in silence for a moment. The Polaroid camera in his mind snapped manically, wanting to take as many mental snapshots as it could of this moment. In the light of the morning. With her. Knowing full well his eyes were probably bloodshot and glazed over with the anxious thoughts spinning around his head. But she still stared right into them. Warm and determined to weasel her way in. She was doing a good job. “If you don’t want to cry in front of me, I get it. I can turn around or like… I don’t fucking know.” Her eyes fluttered shut for a moment. “You can pretend I’m sleeping.”

A genuine laugh came this time around. It was louder than he was expecting. Another set of tears escaped his eyes. Her eyes opened again to him. The color of the earth on a warm summer day. He didn’t even know why the tears kept coming. There was a smile on his face. He was in bed with an objectively beautiful girl who didn’t give a shit that he was crying for no particular reason. A young woman who was exciting and new yet shockingly familiar. He leaned in and pressed his lips to hers, his wrist breaking from her grasp so he could cup his hand against her cheek.

For once, there was nothing quite wanton in the kiss. It was simply a kiss. Just a means of being connected to one another. Somewhere between their intermingled breaths, there was a quiet message being shared. He didn’t know what it was and was pretty certain she couldn’t decipher it either. “You know,” he mumbled against her lips. His eyes stayed closed. He just wanted to stay wrapped up in the moment a second longer. Surrounded by her. The rest of the world melting away. “This is the first time I’ve woken up next to you with clothes on.”

She broke out into laughter. Loud and jubilant. She threw her head back with his hand still on her cheek. “Jesus Christ,” she bellowed before looking back at him. “I get it. You don’t want to talk feelings. It’s fucking fine, dude.” While that was true, he felt whatever had crept into his head sometime during the night had dissolved into nothing but a quiet buzzing in the distance. She made him smile, pulling him right out of the depression quicksand that liked to suck him down into the pits of despair. “But it’s a nice change of pace, right?”

He couldn’t bring himself to pull his hand from her. His palm stayed there, framing her face as though she was a piece of art that belonged in the museum of his fucked up brain. “Yeah, I think so,” he agreed. It was. He couldn’t say that he minded waking up like this. Gently. Tenderly. With her. If he didn’t know any better, he might have said that was the best part of it all. Her. 

A wild grin spread across her face. “It’s like a real sleepover,” she mused. “We barely slept. We talked about people we like.” She waggled her eyebrows at him. “Like,  _ like _ like.” He opened his mouth to respond, but she continued. “There were tears. Some kissing, but we still both woke up with clothes on.”

“You had some weird sleepovers, I think,” he finally cut in, a chuckle lingering in his voice.

She shrugged. “Maybe,” she clucked, pecking his lips briefly. “But hey--” she poked him in the middle of his chest, “--I made you laugh.”

There was a sense of pride in her voice. A brightness in her smile that made his stomach do a flip. She was happy to have made him feel happier. The thought stirred up a concoction of emotion in his chest. One that he could discern all the flavors of. Sadness. Excitement. Joy. Anxiety. Instead of trying to pull apart each ingredient of the happiness potion inside himself, he simply pushed back in to meet her lips again.

Once more, the roots began to retract from his heart as the problems that loomed off in the distance became inconsequential. No school stress. No family drama. No Jess wanting to talk. For another sweet moment, he was able to simply savor her in the soft light of the early morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in an update. Life is crazy. I hope you all are staying safe and well.
> 
> Thank you all again for reading <3
> 
> (also ya girl will respond to comments sometime tomorrow so I can get some sleep in!)


	15. Classical Gem Theory (Recess II)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Silvia and Paul go out for dinner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I thought I would wait a while until the next one of these, but here we are.

Boston in the summer was sticky with heat. That was a big part of why Paul never ventured there during his off time in college or now with work. The humidity was heavy, near 100% when he had looked at the weather upon arriving. Cigarette smoke still hung thickly in the air from a woman who had passed by at least five minutes before. He ran the back of his hand over his forehead, finding he was still, in fact, sweating bullets. He wished for nothing more than to be trapped in a heavily air conditioned room to the point where he would be cold in his t-shirt. At that point, he didn’t even care. Anything cooler than the ninety degree August heat would have been preferable.

His eyes wandered out the open window beside the table he sat at. They had found themselves wandering the city streets when they pulled up to the hotel a full forty five minutes earlier than anticipated. The sidewalks were packed with all sorts of flavors of people. Mostly tourists as they scrambled to go much of anywhere as the summer season began to come to a close. Silvia had mentioned she always liked going to the North End while she lived in the city. That it had some of the best hole-in-the-wall eateries, yet they found themselves at a small restaurant with a menu that would end in a bill greater than what he would spend on groceries for the week.

“Paul, are you alright?” His eyes flicked back from the cobblestone street and up to his girlfriend’s mother. It was strange to him how well he and Silvia got along. Even with Emma not around all the time, he found himself spending a lot of evenings with her mother. Not only was the food better than whatever he would whip up at home, he genuinely enjoyed her company. She was calming and funny as he remembered her being back when he was in elementary school. There was a cool way about her that made it seem like everything was water off a duck’s back to her. In contrast, he felt like he had to be whatever absorbed the water that fell off the duck’s back. Maybe he was the whole damn lake of worries. Either way, it was nice to sit and chat with her at the end of a day. “What’s on your mind, baby boy?”

He stared out at her across the table. Her hair was piled on top of her head. A pair of reading glasses was perched upon her nose. Her index finger was poised on an item in the menu. Likely, she looked up at him halfway through glancing at her options for dinner. “Nothing,” he told her. Not entirely a lie. “I’m just tired.” Also not a lie. With Emma gone, he had been sleeping terribly. The house seemed bigger and colder without her there. Like there were all sorts of things waiting to crawl out of corners to come out and feast on him. He knew there weren’t, but that didn’t stop him from locking their bedroom door at night. Then there was the three hour car ride from Hatchetfield into the city he had offered to take, so Silvia didn’t have to. It had been an exhausting few weeks, but even so, a small smile touched his lips. “Excited to see Emma, though.”

She matched his grin. “I am, too,” she agreed before looking back down at her menu. “Also, get whatever you want, honey. My treat.” He felt a flush come over his cheeks. A wave of guilt crashed in his gut. Even the cheapest thing on the menu was too expensive for him to order without feeling needlessly guilty. Without looking up, she let out a sigh. “Paul, I’m not short on cash.” Eyes flashed up at him. Deep and dark. Familiar. God, he couldn’t wait to see Emma later. “I’d like to treat you to…” Her words trailed off when the young waitress showed back up at their table since having dropped off menus with them. Silvia beamed up at her. “Could I get a glass of the merlot?”

The waitress scribbled something down as she glanced over to him. “Um, could I get a water please?” he sputtered more so than he hoped he would. There was no need to be nervous. He knew Silvia, and later that night, he would be seeing Emma for the first time in two and a half weeks. It was the most time she’d been away in a long time. Since she was still in school. Since he was still in that shoebox apartment. Since things were still relatively new. Well, there was plenty to be nervous about, but nothing that couldn’t wait another night.

Brow arching at him for just a second, Silvia gently patted the young girl’s arm. “We’ll take a bottle for the table.” If he didn’t know any better, he would have said the waitress chuckled just a little bit, but instead, she quickly said her pleasantries before bounding off to retrieve the bottle of wine. “What’s eating at you, Paul? You look as nervous as a piglet at a hog roast.”

His face pinched at the analogy. Truthfully, he was feeling more like a pot of water constantly on the verge of boiling. A humming bundle of nerves that felt like it buzzed and buzzed without ever needing to stop. Not that it was entirely new for him. He had been nervous for as long as he could remember. That’s how he described it at least. Not that he didn’t have more to worry about in recent times. There were a lot of developments that had happened. A mortgage. A cat. Emma coming in the way Emma did. Loud and all at once. Just the way she had rolled into his life. These combined with the pre-existing worries. Work. The crippling fear of rejection. His goddamn parents across town judging every single decision he made. He looked at Silvia, and for a moment, he thought about spilling his guts to her. About anything and everything. He knew very well that he couldn’t do that, though. No matter how warm she was or accepting or fucking chill, he couldn’t just do that to her. 

He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he answered. It was a dirty rotten lie, but what Silvia didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. “Just trying to decompress a little. The drive was long, and I don’t know…” His words trailed off as his gaze found the cobblestones outside again. They were due to be there all weekend. He made a note to come back with Emma the following night. It would be a nice desperately needed night out just the two of them. Sitting at the open window with a gentle breeze rushing in as they enjoyed their Italian food. The hum of people wandering down the streets. A small smile touched his lips. “I still get nervous to see her, y’know?”

It was true. There was still a series of butterflies that would fill his stomach when she entered a room. A flush that would hit his cheeks when she smiled at him. She could talk to him and feel like he was soaring right into the sky. Hell, just thinking about her made him feel like he could single-handedly take on an army. She was the most incredible human he ever met, and she chose to be with him. It was absolutely insane. Silvia’s face had melted into something that read as fond yet wistful. “I know, baby boy,” she said quietly while scooping her purse up off the floor. A fuller smile found its way to her face as she dug through it. She pulled her hand out of it to gesture to her face. “You get all kinds of red. It’s really very cute.” She brought her eyes up to him once more and tilted her head to the side. “My Emma bringing you home was the most shocking thing she’s ever done.” Snorting, she went back to digging through the bag that was far too large to be carrying around on a day to day basis. Eyebrows shot up as she continued to speak, “Just when I thought she couldn’t do anything that would throw me off. She brought her _friend_ home from school.”

“We _were_ friends at that point,” he piped up, instantly regretting his decision. Silvia had a way of finding out about things. Even if it was years later, she somehow knew everything. She had an exact timeline of everyone around it. Simultaneously, it was impressive and horrifying. Somehow between when they had stopped acting like a couple of assholes and when he came home with Emma for the first time with the official label of ‘boyfriend’, Silvia had discovered what was going on. “Or… um… yeah, friends.”

Silvia looked up at him with an arched brow, looking hauntingly like Emma any time he tried to bullshit her. “Oh yeah, you two were friends, and I’m the queen of fucking France, mijo,” she snorted. “Your brother so nicely told me all the… gorey details about how they got home that day and found the two of you--”

“Okay,” he spat out, holding both his hands up in defense. Part of him was afraid of what was going to come tumbling out of her mouth next. He was fairly certain it was just going to be mention of her daughter’s hand down his pants, which in and of itself was uncomfortable, but he was concerned about anything else Emma might have accidentally divulged to her mother in passing. Even just an offhanded comment here or there could have made things much more complicated than they needed to be. “I get it. We weren’t _really_ just friends. I just…”

“It was a hard time,” Silvia finished for him. It was. He had a hard time for a long time. Not even simply before anything was official. He felt this guilt for a long time after they had officially been together. After Emma had told him she was in love with him. After they spent most of their summer together. After they bought a house together. Some days, he woke up next to her feeling like he was in some sort of dream. Like he was living someone else’s life. Someone better than he was. Someone more worthy of her love. “I’m very glad you came around, though. You’ve made my baby very happy.” His heart swelled at the words. “And your sweet idiot brother has made my other baby happy, too.” Silvia paused again to look up at him, pulling her reading glasses off of her face to show her exasperation more. “For being such a smart boy, Jack really is a dumbass, though.”

He took his turn to snort at her words. “Yeah, I know. He’s a nightmare,” he replied. It was nice to talk about something else. About Jack and Jane even. Journalist Jack doing what he loved. Doctor Jane helping people. In most people’s eyes, they would be golden children, yet his parents couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge his brother’s accomplishments and Silvia was just happy Jane had someone keeping her head in the clouds. He was pretty sure Michael was thrilled with how Jane had turned out but couldn’t be bothered with Jack, but even that was a guess. He hadn’t had too many interactions with Emma’s father, which was her own doing. He didn’t complain, though. The few dinners he had with Mike Perkins were less than comfortable, and that was coming from the least comfortable person in the entire universe. 

“He’s sweet, though,” Silvia added, still rummaging through her purse. He was beginning to grow curious with what she could be digging around for. Her glasses and wallet were both on the table. Her phone was back at the hotel. Various chapsticks had come up and out of the mass of items she carried around with her. He made a note to commend her to schlepping so much shit around with her all the time. Her eyes widened along with her smile before her stare shot up to him. “I couldn’t have asked for a nicer boy to make my Janey so happy.”

And Jane and Jack were just that. Happy. It was the happiest he had ever seen his brother. Ecstatically joyful so much of the time. Even coming away with a smile after talking with their parents. Mostly because he had been talking about Jane. It was like a bizarro universe. One of the things he and Jack had always bonded on was the fact that they both had been deemed as lesser by their parents. For whatever reason, they were never good enough no matter how hard they tried to please them. Paul, opposite to his brother, found himself leaving discussions with his parents that involved Emma angry. Full of rage with how they demeaned her without even knowing her. The most incredible human he had ever met. They never acknowledged her like they did Jess. He just wanted to scream imagining their stupid smug faces. 

The disappointed expressions of Glen and Astrid Matthews seemed to disappear from his mind, though, as Silvia slid a small box across the table to him. He stared down at it quizzically. “I know you haven’t said anything, and neither has Emma,” she began as she placed her bag back down on the ground. _“But_ I know how upset you were about your grandmother’s ring.”

His heart skipped a beat. He glanced down at the box in front of him. Small. Red velvet. He looked back up to her. “What… are you talking about?” he sputtered out. His hand found the box. It was tiny in his hand as he imagined a box like it would feel. He was nervous to open it. Afraid of what would be inside. If it was anything other than what he thought it could be, he would be mildly destroyed. He gently nudged the box open. Eyes went wide. Eyebrows shot up. He looked from the box to her. “Silvia…”

She folded her hands in front of her with a soft satisfied grin on her face. “My mother came from a wealthy family back in [ Nuevo León ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuevo_Le%C3%B3n). My grandfather was high up on the ladder of a steel tycoon when she met my father, who worked in one of the factories,” she explained. His eyes drifted to the cool pillowing of the box. A sizable rectangular green stone was haloed with transparent stones he imagined to be diamonds. “She was told by my grandfather she was forbidden to be with him.” Her chin rested in the palm of her hand. “So she stole some of the family’s jewelry and ran away to America.” 

He let out a silent exhaled laugh. “Sounds like something Emma would do,” he chuckled lightly, unable to look at anything besides the piece of jewelry in his hand or his former elementary school art teacher. “Just a big fuck you to anyone who told her she couldn’t do something.”

Rolling her eyes, she still smiled at the thought of her rowdy daughter. “I wish you could have seen the two of them… Emma and her grandmother. Lord only knows the trouble they would have caused if my mother were still alive.” He opened his mouth to apologize. “Honey, she’s been dead well over a decade. Don’t waste apologies on the dead. They won’t hear them.” Bringing her attention back to the topic at hand, she nodded toward the ring in the box. “That was the only piece she didn’t end up selling to keep us afloat when I was a little girl. Things were hard. My papa worked hard in and out of so many jobs as we moved around, and her jewels were real and sold for a lot. But she never let this one go.” Her eyes were a little distant like she was in another world. “She gave it to me when the girls were little, and I never knew what to do with it. _Then_ I saw your face the night when--”

“Silvia, you don’t need to--”

  
Her hand fell over his. Soft and warm. “Please, I want to,” she whispered. The words almost got stitched up with the twanging of the music around them. He bit down on his cheek to keep from welling up, suddenly overwhelmed by the implications of what was happening. “I don’t know what you guys intend on doing, but in case you two end up going down that road, I wanted you to have something.”

While he didn’t want to admit it, he had been thinking about it. A month earlier, he almost stopped by Silvia’s house to ask her permission to marry her daughter, but as he passed, he shook it off. If Emma even got word that he had asked permission to have her, she would have freaked out. There was no other person’s permission she needed aside from her own, and so he kept on rolling. Then everything had rolled out in every possible way he couldn't have predicted. Everything fell by the wayside after. His plans for the future were placed behind the iminent art show she had landed in Boston. “I don’t know if we’ll even--”

  
“Just in case, sweet boy,” she insisted, squeezing his free hand. “If you want.” The second part was added in. Almost panicked. An emotion he wasn’t used to hearing in her voice. “If not, you could always give the most incredible Christmas gift.”

He glanced down at the ring again. It wasn’t what he imagined. He always pictured his grandmother’s ring. Sapphires and diamonds that now sat on someone else’s finger. He tried his best to not resent Jack for it, but he still did. As it was, he was still his grandmother’s favorite. He couldn’t picture why she would have even given Jack her ring. But it all seemed to be background noise as he stared down at the emerald in his hand. “Thanks, Silvia,” was all he could mutter amidst all the thoughts spinning around in his head. The noise of tourists melded with the thoughts of Christmases and New Years in their home. Soccer games and back to school nights. The good days and the bad. Everything was spinning around in his head and settling all in one emerald.

His stomach lurched.

But he still smiled.

The box snapped shut as the waitress came by once again to take their orders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience with this, guys. I think I needed a little break from the world and hopefully will now be back to regular updates.


	16. Brunchology

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Breakfast is late at Silvia's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear to god I will respond to all the comments eventually! We'll get there! I promise!

Breakfast at Silvia’s house was an event. Eggs and various meats. Sausage. Bacon. Ham. Croissants and butter. Bagels and cream cheese. Various fruits. Paul could make out a variety of kiwis, strawberries, and cantaloupe. It all seemed very overkill to him. There were only five of them, and while he and Jack tended to eat a lot, they didn’t eat  _ that _ much. His stomach growled as his eyes hit the clock on the microwave. 11:49. He couldn’t remember the last time he slept past eight. 

“I can’t believe you drink your coffee black,” Emma grumbled as she poured a generous mugful of dark caffeinated liquid out for him. “Fucking sadist.” He leaned against the counter, watching her. All of his encounters with her in the morning usually involved rolling out of bed and scrambling around to find clothes. This morning had been different. He had awoken quietly. Eyes gently opened to find her laying on her back, scrolling through her phone. A bright grin grew over her face to greet him. His heart skipped a beat in his chest. Fully clothed and just casually waking up to her felt… normal. Like he had always done it. Even hunching over her as she poured them coffee felt like an average day. She glanced up at him, a smirk tugging at the corner of her lips. “You  _ also  _ failed to tell me you wear glasses.”

His eyebrows shot up. A hand flew up to the side of his glasses. They weren’t really something he thought about often. He had been wearing contacts since he was in high school. It made all the after school tennis a lot easier. Friday night was just the night he took his contacts out, religiously following the eye doctor’s recommendation of taking his contacts out at least once a week overnight despite them being extended wear. He was realizing that he had only ever seen her on Saturday nights at her place. She wouldn’t have even known his eyes were fucked. He probably would have killed every woodland creature and child in proximity to his car if he chose to go out without glasses or contacts, but this wasn’t something he even thought about. His bad vision was second nature. She barely knew him. “Oh… um, yeah,” he replied, his hand falling to grab the mug she was handing to him. “Yep, I’m… pretty fucking blind.”

She smiled up at him, reaching up to smooth out his hair. “I like them,” she said, and he believed her. Most things she said had him believing her. It wasn’t too difficult to convince him of much, though. He was constantly getting shit from his brother and roommates that he was too naive. That he would follow anyone who showed him the slightest bit of attention. But he really truly believed her. “It’s a good look on you, bathroom boy.” Her hand lingered for a moment before her knuckles lightly dragged across his cheek. The world felt like it stood still for a moment. They stared at each other, a little starry eyed. At least that was what he thought he was picking up from her. To be fair, she did say she’d date him given the chance. He had taken Jess on four or five… or ten dates before she even considered committing to something more serious.

“K-I-S-S-I--ow! Babe!”

Both of their heads shot in the direction of the far side of the kitchen, where Jack and Jane had materialized. Emma had pointed it out the night before and seeing him now in his glasses all a mess from sleeping, he could see how he and Jack definitely looked like they were related. Same soft features. Tired big blue eyes. Messy chestnut hair. Tall with sloping shoulders. All of the comments about how he “ _ had _ to be Jack’s brother” made sense. He didn’t always get associated with Glen and Dan very often, but the Jack comparisons were front and center every year at school. Jane, on the other hand, did not seem like she would have triggered similar reactions for Emma just based on looks. The two girls really didn’t look too much alike as all. Maybe in hair or perhaps skin tone. Even so, Jane’s skin was cooler, pinker compared to Emma’s warm toffee tan. Large almost sad looking blue eyes stared through glasses beneath a set of heavy bangs. She was taller than Emma. A little more solid. Something about her came off as colder than her little sister. A little less friendly despite her soft features and clear sky blue eyes.

“Well,  _ babe, _ you don’t have to give them a hard time,” she explained to Jack. Her hair was piled on top of her head, unlike Emma’s which was left wild and free. “Besides, it looks like your brother wants to crawl in a hole. Leave them be.”

Before Paul even had the chance to respond, Emma was already jumping in as she spun on her heel to fully face his brother. “Yeah, your brother  _ fucks _ , and I’ll kick your ass if you keep giving him a hard time,” she snapped back. He could feel his face getting redder with every word. She glanced over her shoulder at his wide-eyed horror. “What? You do. I’m  _ defending _ your honor.”

“Oh my god,” he mumbled, trying his very hardest to hide behind his coffee mug. “I hate everything happening right now so much.”

“They’ve only known each other a couple weeks, and  _ you _ couldn’t even kiss me until the fifth date,” Jane groaned, leaning down to the table to scoop up a handful of strawberries. “What’s up with that?”

Jack’s eyebrows shot up, and Emma attempted to hold back a scoff. She leaned back and nudged Paul with her shoulder. “Dude, you make that face all the time,” she whispered. “You’re like a couple of fucking ding dong twins.”

Jack had lifted a hand to his chest and glanced down at Jane. “I was trying to be a gentleman, Jane,” he argued, receiving an incredulous snort in response. He pursed his lips, and once again, Paul could see where not a single person could deny they were related.  _ “Fine _ , you were…  _ are _ pretty and smart, and I was a nervous dumbass receptionist that was shooting  _ way _ out of my league.”

The answer seemed to satisfy Jane, who let a smile crack on her lips. “I  _ am _ out of your league,” she agreed with a lilt of joking in her voice. He rolled his eyes but matched her smile. Paul couldn’t remember a time he remembered seeing his brother so entranced by someone. Even when he was back in school and went flitting about with the girl from Clivesdale. The beautiful redhead who he tried so desperately to get back with after she dumped him. There was something so much lighter about Jack in this context. It almost made Paul want to smile with him. “And I  _ guess _ it was worth it in the end.” Emma made a gagging noise, sending her sister glaring in her direction. Jane tossed a hand out toward them. “Shut the fuck up, Em. You’re out here making the poor boy sweat like a hooker in church after only knowing him two weeks.”

“More like just Paul in a church,” Jack commented, recalling the few occasions they had been stuck going to churches. What he failed to mention was how uncomfortable they had both been. Mostly because all the adults smelled like mothballs and stale coffee breath. And then there were the crackers that definitely weren’t really made for consumption and the wine they were forced to drink out of tiny multicolored plastic cups. Emma turned back to Paul with a perplexed stare. As if she was wondering what kind of unholy act he must have committed to be so ill at ease in a church.

“Conejita, the boys are Jewish,” Silvia said plainly as she bounded into the room, clearly reading her daughter’s mind. She appeared unbothered by all the conversation they had been loudly having. He took a tentative sip of his coffee. The whiskey from the night before was still making his head a little fuzzy. Also all of the quiet talking he and Emma had partaken in the night before. He stared back at her. She hadn’t looked away from him, as though she herself had been put under some spell. There was no possible way she was a real person, he decided. This was all some sort of dream. “So please stop making the sweet boy so uncomfortable.” A hand rested on his upper arm. He glanced in Silvia’s direction. There was a smudge of paint in the corner of her reading glasses. “How did you sleep?”

“ _ Did _ you sleep?” Jack snuck out under his breath without being able to stop himself. Jane slapped his arm. “What? You said the same thing this morning.”

Silvia jabbed a finger out in his direction. “Watch it,  güero,” she shot back immediately. “You be nice to your brother.” The hand on Paul’s arm gave a reassuring rub. “He’s new here.”

“I’ve known him twenty three years,” Jack reminded her. “I’ve been being mean to him his whole life.”

“That’s not even true,” Paul chimed in, face pinched at his brother’s statement. “You were the nice one.”

“Oh and what were you? Tiny Satan? C’mon, Paul. You were the sweet one,” Jack insisted, turning to address Jane specifically. “One time in high school, he brought this girl home and--”

“Jack! Shut the fuck up!” Paul barked. The blush hadn’t ceased, but had begun to burn wildly along his cheeks. He felt like he must have been lighting up like a neon sign. “No one asked for your dumbass stories!”

“And no one asked for me to see you with your girlfriend’s hand down your pants, but here we are!”

His eyes went wide. Heart pounded wildly in his chest. “She’s not--”

“As much fun as it is to have all this sibling rivalry in my house again,” Silvia started, stepping toward the loaded table. “I really don’t need to hear about the sex lives of my children. I  _ really _ don’t… and the food’s getting cold. So you boys need to shut your mouths and just eat, okay?” A muttered okay came from the Matthews brothers. She nodded in confirmation. “Okay, and Paul, we have pancakes, too. Emma told me you liked those.”

Sure enough, a stack of pancakes that looked suspiciously filled with chocolate chips. His heart sped up once more. He looked at Emma who had a hint of a grin just barely dancing on her lips. “Um… yeah, thanks,” he mumbled, unable to fully wrap his mind around what happened. Not only did she talk to her mom about him, which he was already well aware of, but she also noted what he liked. Made sure that there was something he enjoyed there for breakfast for him. They didn’t know a whole lot about each other, but she had remembered the things he had told her enough to remind her mom to have chocolate chip pancakes for him.

“Oh,  _ conejita,” _ Jane cooed while she crossed the kitchen, taking a second to knock her hip into Emma as she passed. “Little bunny, making sure her boyfriend--”

“He’s  _ not _ my boyfriend,” Emma stated firmly. It was what they had agreed to. What  _ he _ had wanted. So why did her denial of the label to whatever relationship they were forming make his stomach sink? She took her turn to stab her index finger in Jane’s direction. “Also you shut your fucking mouth before I shut it for you, little  _ bee.” _

Jane slammed the cabinet shut that she had opened to retrieve a glass from. “You’re being a shit,” she snapped as she turned to face them. He took note of a dainty silver necklace hanging over the collar of her crewneck t-shirt. A small charm that resembled a honeybee. Similar to the one he remembered having noticed Emma wearing the night they met. A small rabbit pendant. Bunny and bee. If he wasn’t so remarkably uncomfortable and anxious, he would have smiled at the sentiments behind the necklaces, but as it was, he was still just standing in the kitchen, nervously clutching a mug of black coffee between two feuding sisters while his brother watched on. It was a very strange Saturday morning. “And the fucking worst.”

“No,  _ you’re _ the fucking worst,” Emma sneered. Jane responded with a repetition of what her sister had said but mumbled and high pitched, pulling open the refrigerator. “Just because you’re going to be a fucking doctor doesn’t mean you can be an asshole.”

She turned back to them with a carton of orange juice in her hand. “Actually, it does,” she dead panned to Emma’s shock. “Didn’t you hear? I’m going to be an asshole-ologist. It’s a pretty new field, but it’ll be  _ pretty _ sweet to just get to be a fucking asshole all the time.”

Emma’s middle finger raised. “Fuck you,” she grumbled while she scooped her cup of coffee.”

“No, fuck you,” Jane replied with her middle finger shooting up. “Mom, don’t look at me like that. She--”

“Jane Daniela, you know full well she did  _ not _ start that,” Silvia rumbled as she filled a plate with fruit and pastries. “I don’t care if you’re getting a degree in asshole-ology. Stop antagonizing your sister.”

“Hah, I told--”

“Emma May--” Emma winced at the sound of her name leaving her mother’s lips, “--stop trying to fight everyone who mildly aggravates you.” She huffed, pulling her glasses to sit atop her head while she looked out at the room full of young adults. “You all are unbelievable. This nice breakfast and you all--”

“Thank you, Mama,” Jane piped up first, leaving the orange juice on the counter to move toward Silvia and kiss the side of her head.

Emma took her turn next to follow in her sister’s footsteps. “Thank you for breakfast, Mami,” she muttered, leaving a kiss on her cheek.

A beat of silence passed through the room, which felt weird. The personalities were so large and the voices so loud that the entire time he had been there felt like the rooms were nearly alive. But this moment of peace felt palpable in and of itself. Like there were feelings bubbling up from the floorboards, threatening to peek through into the conversation. Silvia stared at her daughters, eyes passing between Jane and Emma. A small almost sad smile broke out on her face. “My girls,” she whispered, hand reaching up and squeezing Jane’s arm and then Emma’s. “My babies, both home.”

His heart hurt slightly at the sight before him. Not that he didn’t feel joy for them and their family, but there was a part of him that would have killed to have some sort of similar reaction when he came home. If he and Jack were to stop in at their parents’ house that very day, their parents might not even act like it was any surprise at all to see either of them stop by. Even if Paul rarely came home from school unless it was an extended break. There would be a cool greeting. Polite conversation. Uncomfortable mandatory hugs. What he wouldn’t given to have his mother look at him with all the overwhelming love Silvia looked at her daughters with. 

“Not that I’m not happy to see you, too, boys,” she backtracked to his surprise.

A buzz came from the pocket of his sweats. A text. Probably Ted hungover to talk about the bad Tinder date he went on the night before. “Listen, Silvia, you don’t have to butter them up,” Jack interjected, lucky for Paul who went to fish out his phone. “I know you love me best.” The screen lit up. “I won’t tell them. Don’t worry.” Paul frowned.

_ Jess _

_ 1 Unread Message _


	17. The Dynamics of Interpersonal Communication

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma and Paul have an interesting conversation on night two.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the less than consistent updating. Life is crazy, but this gets a little love most nights. It's just a little slower going. :)

Paul wished he could just bottle up the feeling of the weekend and bring it with him back to school when he ultimately had to return to Monday afternoon. The feeling of sitting around Silvia’s kitchen table eating an enormous delicious breakfast. The ease of hanging out in the backyard around the fire. The absolute peace of sitting against Emma’s headboard as he tapped away at his laptop all while she lazily scrolled through his phone. Which was exactly where he found himself that second night.

Like her apartment, she had a string of lights that hung around a mirror and then laid out across the dresser it stood on. Several polaroids were stuck around the outside edge of the mirror. Emma with her various friends. Several included Melissa from school. She had walked in on him examining them after brushing her teeth earlier in the night.  _ “Don’t judge the blonde. I was seventeen and wanted to piss my mom off.” _ He wasn’t sure why, but he felt giddy at the thought of getting a better glimpse into her life. Like she was a good book that kept unraveling before his eyes.

Between glances at the barely filled Word document on his screen, he took moments to peer down at her. Just slightly so she wouldn’t even notice. Hopefully. She laid, sprawled out on her side of the bed, beside him, chin tucked into her chest as she read a comment thread on Facebook. A snort left her on occasion. “You know Linda Monroe, Paul?” she muttered without looking up from her phone. “Because she’s definitely cheating on her doctor husband.” Her eyes flicked up to him. His heart lurched in his chest. “She’s also a colossal biotch, but I think that’s just common knowledge at this point.”

A smile lifted at the corner of his lips. “Yeah, I know her,” he answered, pulling his glasses off and scrubbing his hand over his face. “My brother’s married to her sister.” When he put his glasses back on, he found her beaming up at him with an open mouthed grin. He furrowed his brows but found himself grinning back. “What?”

“Your brother’s married to Lillian?” He nodded. She shot up in her spot. “No shit?”

Her face looked like a kid who was looking on eagerly at her birthday cake, waiting impatiently to blow out the candles as ‘Happy Birthday’ drolled on. “Yes shit,” he responded without skipping a beat. “She’s probably sleeping with him, too.”

She barked out a laugh. “Oh my  _ god!” _ she hollered, throwing her head back. “Are you fucking serious?” Her head bounced back down, so she was gazing at him again. And that was really how it felt. Gazing. Like there was something a little longing lingering in the depths of chocolate and earth. He could feel his cheeks growing red as her eyes scanned his face, but regardless, he continued to smile at her as he nodded. “You are just the fucking gift that keeps on giving!” She popped up onto her knees, and before he was able to get a word in edgewise, she was kissing him. Soft and slow as she seemed to enjoy doing. As the weekend ticked on, he found himself trying to ignore the butterflies in his gut less and less. He kissed her back, leaning towards her. God, he would have stayed right in this moment forever given the chance. Unfortunately, she was the one to pull away. Had he been more comfortable with himself and the whole situation at hand, he might have pulled her back in. As it was, he didn’t. Instead, he watched her smile soften. “What’re you working on?”

He blinked. It wasn’t what he had expected to be asked, yet there she was looking at him as though she was genuinely interested in what he was up to. “Oh… it’s, um, a thing?” he offered. She leaned back on the balls of her hands, smirking over at his bumbling. “No, it’s a thing for school. Basically I’m doing this whole research project. It’s all hands on and stuff.”

With an arched brow, she responded, “A research project? For a math major?”

“There’s a lot more to research with the different disciplines of math than you’d think,” he explained, a little defensive. She bit down on her lip to keep from laughing at him. “Yeah, laugh it up, but I’m right.” Before he could get another word in, she was scooting closer to him, sidling right up next to him to peer at his computer screen. He swallowed hard. “But  _ no _ , it’s not mathematical research. I… uh, I’m a double major.”

She arched a brow. “Oh yeah? What’s the other one, big brain?” she mused. Her head laid out against his shoulder, and he felt stunned and completely at ease all at once with how natural it all felt. There was something surprisingly comfortable about her. Like they had been dating for years when, in reality, it was hard to tell where the line between something fun and unlabeled and dating really was. Her eyes narrowed at the screen on his lap. “Oh my god.”

He felt his shoulders tense up as his eyebrows raised. “What?” he spat out, suddenly panicked. Truthfully, he didn’t really know  _ why _ he was panicky all of a sudden. It wasn’t as though she didn’t frequently say that phrase and then give him shit afterward. Though frequently was relative. There hadn’t been much time that had gone by to make it a repeat offense, but it was often enough that he noticed. And he kind of liked it. Her shit giving made him laugh. She was clever and funny. Maybe he just liked her. The jury was still out. She shifted to look up at him with the same narrowed gaze. His eyes went wide.  _ “What?” _

“You weren’t shitting me the other night,” she stated plainly. He had no idea what she was referring to. Really, he hadn’t bullshitted her at all. Save for the night before when he lied about Jess calling, but he was trying to push that out of his mind. Unless she picked up mind reading while he wasn’t looking, there was no way she would have known that. To be fair, she would have said that he  _ was _ shitting her the other night if that were the case. God, now he was wondering about her mind reading abilities. Just another thing to spiral over. “You’re not  _ maybe _ going to be a teacher. You’re  _ going  _ to be a teacher, you double major education mathass nerd.”

He blinked. “Yeah, I guess,” he got out as a reply. It was not where he had anticipated her going, but he supposed the document tentatively titled ‘ _ mental health in schools thing for ed capstone _ ’ may have given him away. “I mean, yeah, probably… I’d like to.”

The expression on her face softened in a way he wasn’t used to. The same way she had looked at him that morning. A little curious. A little adoring. His heart raced in his chest. “It’s okay, nerd,” she assured him, resting her chin on his shoulder. “I’ve got a minor in botany.”

Pursing his lips, he continued to look at her. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her and her stupid very beautiful face that wasn’t stupid at all. All things considered, he wasn’t entirely sure how a girl like that wanted to hook up with  _ him. _ However, he thought the same with Jess, but eventually, they had been happy together. Or at least he thought. Maybe things would just get sour with Emma, too. Everything would come crumbling to an end eventually. Nothing stayed forever, but as it was, he was there with her. In her bed. Staring into her eyes. Feeling more butterflies in his gut than he could remember in the last few months. “That explains all the plants,” he landed on. And also the doodle of that kooky professor. He was fairly certain he was some sort of science teacher, but he thought the man taught biology. Perhaps he was mistaken. 

Her lips twisted up into a lopsided smile. “Put the laptop away,” she told him, jutting her chin out in the direction of his computer. He took his turn to furrow his brows. Rolling her eyes, she pushed the laptop closed and then leaned over him to lay it on the floor. “My idiot sister and your dumbass brother walked in on us yesterday, but it was my turn to have a big brain moment. So I locked the door.” Brows went from confused to surprised in a matter of seconds. She grinned as she popped back up over his lap. “Also it’s Saturday night. We’ve got a tradition to keep up.” She threw one of her legs over his lap. 

Sitting there above him, he stared up at her. Hands found themselves on his cheeks. Her skin was cool against his. The soft light from her bedside lamp bathed her in a warm glow. One of his hands landed on her thigh, bare below the hem of the underwear. He wished that he could pause time for just a moment. Maybe forever. Just stay with her like this and forget the rest of the world. Jess. School. His parents. Everything. His other hand reached up and pushed a handful of curls off of her face. Freckles sprinkled along her face like breadcrumbs leading him back to a place he simultaneously barely knew and understood fluently in his mind. “Okay,” he agreed without a second thought.

Another bright smile broke out across her face. His heart just about leapt out of his chest. She might as well have lit up the entire room. No light bulbs were needed. She was all the electricity required to jumpstart everything around them. Instead of riding on that static wave, though, she just stayed there for a beat. Thumbs ran over his cheekbones. Eyes scanned over his face. “We should date,” she blurted out. Everything froze for a moment. Not the moment he wanted either. This was what he didn’t want. He wanted a hook up. Maybe two with the girl who slid in through the window at that stupid party. He wanted to get back with his ex. He wanted to drink his feelings away that night. He wanted to disconnect from his feelings before trying pathetically to get Jessica back. At least he thought he wanted. “I know you said you didn’t want to.” Could she read his mind? That thought was back in the forefront of his brain as he looked into eyes that had grown softer but darker with something. He couldn’t name it exactly, but it made his heart sink. “And I know I said I could hang doing… whatever the fuck this is, but here’s the goddamn skinny, Paul, I like you.”

Without skipping a beat, he responded, “I like you, too.”

She leaned down to knock her forehead against his instead of kissing him like he had anticipated. “Then what the fuck, dude?” she sighed, pressing her nose to his. “I don’t need to call you my boyfriend. I just want to hang out and do shit with you… and  _ also  _ sleep with you but like… y’know, just you because that dick is fucking bomb, dude.”

The light chuckle couldn’t be stopped. His eyes fell from hers. At first, he thought he would be fine with her doing whatever with whoever, but the fact of the matter was, he hadn’t ever actually given any thought to the matter. The idea that she could go out and be with someone else in any capacity made the sinking feeling that came over him when Jess left return tenfold. He hadn’t wanted anything exclusive with her, though, right? “Okay,” he whispered. Their eyes met. If it had been possible, he would have seen eons pass between them. Lifetimes bridging the gaps between their gazes. But that wasn’t possible. He didn’t think it was at least.

This time, she blinked, stunned at the response. “Okay?” she repeated. The thumbs grazed once more along his cheeks. He nodded and eased into her touch further. What the hell, right? The worst that could happen would be him getting his heart broken again. Been there, done that. “Like,  _ okay _ okay? Like, not just because I’m going to fuck you, right?”

He laughed again, a little louder than before. That was something she had consistently done. Even when she wasn’t there with him, she would send him things periodically that would just make him laugh. It had been a long time since he had found himself smiling so much. With her. In class. By himself. The last couple of weeks felt unreal, yet there he was with one of his hands landing squarely on her waist. “Yeah, like, okay,” he said with a laugh still lingering in his voice. A soft smile touched his lips at the sight of her beaming down at him. His fingers dipped from her waist and underneath the oversized Hatchetfield High t-shirt she was wearing. Her skin was soft and warm. Everything about her was with just a touch of spice. Enough to add flavor into his plain buttered pasta life. “See where this fucking goes, right?”

“You giving me shit, nerd?” she hummed, inching closer to his face. His heart was in his throat. His eyes darted over her face as the beating continued hammering against his ribs. He tried to think back to the beginning of things with Jess. When they were still sweet and getting along. Arms around shoulders. Hands finding each other in the dark of a movie theater. Chaste kisses at dorm room doors. He hadn’t ever felt like his heart could explode from anticipation and excitement around her, though. It seemed like every time he so much as looked at Emma he was catapulted into some sort of beautiful thrill ride. Well, it also helped that she was pulling her t-shirt over her head and definitely hadn’t been wearing a bra the entire time. “Fucking quoting me and shit.”

Her lips found his. They were magnetic. Always on one another. Coming together whenever they were near. Earlier in the evening, she had snuck a peck on his lips when the others had their attention turned elsewhere. The act left him a little dumbstruck with a bewildered smile lingering on his face. “It’s just because I like you,” he mumbled into her mouth. He could feel her smile between kisses. His stomach did a flip.

It was true, though, because he did like her. Very much. He felt like he had known her an eternity. Like something clicked between them. The magnets connected. At the very least, he was happy to have a friend like her wander into his world. Jess had been gone over a month.  _ She _ left him and rebounded quickly. He was allowed to move on… right? It wasn’t too quick. Emma reached down between them to tug his shirt up and over his head. “I can tell,” she muttered while grinding her hips against his. He bit down on the inside of his lip to keep from smiling and groaning all at once.There was no way this wasn’t some fever dream he manifested in his sadness after the breakup. Her hands fanned out across his chest. He hoped she couldn’t feel his heart beating as hard as it was. There was still a smile on her lips. Quiet and personal. Intimate. It almost felt reserved specifically for him. His thumb ran over the ridge of her hip. “But I’m glad you do.” She continued to look down at him almost as though she wanted to say more, but couldn’t find the words. Or maybe she could and was just unable to get them out.

He wanted to tell her that he had liked her from the moment she came in through that window. That he had thought about her every single day since that night. That he was starting to smile and laugh again. But it all seemed a little quick. A little crazy. So instead, he raked a hand through the hair on the back of her head to pull her back down to him. Lips and tongues danced to try and speak the words that neither one of them would allow themselves to divulge to the other. It was something they were both able to understand at this point. A story in braille coming to life beneath their tender but wanting touches. The sort of kisses mapped out in movies and novels. Desperate. He would have dared to say they were passionate, which was a term he would have never used to describe himself. However, she was. She was the technicolor wonderland Dorothy walked out of her displaced house into. The grand finale to a fireworks display. The last hour of the last day of school before summer vacation. 

Somewhere between her kisses and his analogies of her in his mind, she had helped him shimmy out of his sweatpants and tossed her underwear clear across her room. She propped herself up on her knees to reach over him to her bedside table, from which she produced a small box. One silver square shaped foil packet found its way between her teeth. The same brand she had at her place by school. She spat the foil out of her mouth and tossed the empty wrapper before dipping a hand just between them. “Jesus, Emma,” he breathed, tossing his head against the pillow. Maybe at the bottom of it all, he was just horny. It was a fleeting thought. Sex had never been much of a to do. Granted he had slept with all but one person in his time, but sleeping with Jess wasn’t anything more than a checklist item on a checklist relationship. It was because that was what they were supposed to do. Even though she would occasionally back pedal and say they needed to wait until they got married, and that her parents would kill her if they found out. However, things would escalate from time to time as they watched some shitty movie or when she spent the night at his apartment. Even then, it was methodical. Every time had a specific routine. It was almost cyclical in its way. Sterile. Boring.

Once again, though, Emma was like a flash of lightning cutting through the pitch black of night. She leaned down almost like she was going to capture his lips again, but instead her teeth scraped against his neck. An involuntary groan snuck out of his throat. She hummed against his skin, replacing her teeth with her lips. “You didn’t think I forgot already, did you?” she murmured. Her words tickled his neck, which she then took another turn to nip at. He squirmed underneath her touch only to find himself getting further wrapped up in her. That seemed to be how things were going, though. No matter how much he kept trying to squirm away in his discomfort, she just kept sitting there to push away at the envelope he had sealed himself into but not to just push his buttons. At least he didn’t think so. From what he could tell, she wanted to be there. Wanted him around. Which was more than he could have said about a lot of people in his life. 

She kissed him once more, softer and deeper this time, and behind his eyelids, all he could see was the stupid beautiful shit eating grin.


	18. Comfort 102

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paul and Emma hit a familiar coffee spot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I managed to do the impossible and get this up without wifi. That being said, I hopefully should have internet tomorrow, which is when I'll respond to comments.

It was a little odd to be walking through town holding someone’s hand. Then again, it was out of character for Paul in general to be walking around town. He wasn’t one to go out most days or nights even when he was at school. The fact that he happened to be at a party a couple of weeks prior was so out of the norm anyone who knew him normally would have been shocked. Then again to watch him traipse about town hand-in-hand with a girl was really off base as well. When he actually thought about it, he couldn’t say for sure if one was more shocking than the other.

The fact that Emma wanted to head downtown at all was a tad strange. She had mentioned a few times that she really had nothing nice to say about Hatchetfield and that the only reason she ever came back was to see her mother and sister. However, she excitedly chose to lead him down the main drag in town, popping in and out of various small shops. A new coffee place had opened up since the last time he and Jack had been there. All that was there previously was Starbucks. Now, across the street, was a tiny cafe with a green awning that had a terrible font strewn across the front. Thankfully, the font was made bigger in the window. Otherwise, he would have been left guessing what the place even was.

They sat and softly chatted amidst a twiddling of acoustic guitar instrumentals. She took her coffee with a splash of milk and a single sugar. When she took her first sip, the look on her face made him bust out laughing. Her face twisted in disgust, proclaiming it was the worst coffee she had ever tasted in her “entire goddamn fucking life” and that he had to stop laughing before she “kicked his ass”. Eventually, he joined her mindset of it being the worst cup of coffee he had ever consumed, but it didn’t make him grin any less to think of her desperately trying to hide her smile as he laughed at her. 

Being with her in that coffee shop felt like something he had done a dozen times before. As though they had been there every week for a coffee date for years. Getting to know each other more after they met by some other coincidence. She offhandedly mentioned she had applied to work there just before the shop opened up and she squared away her apartment, but they never called her back. He rested his chin in the palm of his hand while she ranted about how she was glad to not serve that shit coffee and imagined that dream of meeting her as the barista in a coffee shop. He would have come in daily to listen to her complain about stupid things. Partaken in drinking a cup of the arguably bad coffee every single day. 

“Pretty weird that your brother’s dating my sister, huh?” Emma hummed as she stared out the large window out to the main drag of Hatchetfield. It was a popular tourist weekend. The beaches were likely packed, and the streets were lined with visor-clad Nantucket t-shirt-wearing people from out of town, glancing between street signs and their cell phones to try and figure out which direction the nearest hotspot was. Eyes slid back over to him. “Don’t you think?”

He shrugged before taking another sip of his coffee. His face pinched at the bitter mouthful. “I mean, I guess?” he replied. He wasn’t so sure it was that odd. Many times over, he had heard about this mysterious ‘Jane’. Jack talked about her incessantly oved their various Skype calls as they played different video games while Paul was still at school. At some point, he figured that Jane didn’t really exist and that Jack was just trying to make it seem like things were going better for him back on the island to make Paul worry less about him. It didn’t even occur to Paul that Emma’s sister might have been the mystery girl who Jack refused to bring home even over a year into this relationship. “I don’t know. Small world?”

She narrowed her eyes. “You don’t think that it’s weird at all that we meet, fuck, and then find out our siblings have been dating pretty seriously for a while?” she challenged. “Because, news flash, Paul, that’s pretty fucking weird.” When he didn’t respond with more than another shrug, she huffed and took another gulp of her iced coffee in order to hide the grin that refused to leave her lips.

The bell attached to the entrance rang behind him. A small wave of heat from outside smacked the back of his neck. “I don’t know, Em,” he replied, taking note of the smile that bloomed on her face at the nickname. He tried to hold back his own and ignore the heat that rose to his cheeks. No one usually looked at him with such joy. Not that they would look at him with any sort of despair or anything like that. There was just never this sense of absolute happiness to be with him. He shook his head and glanced down at his coffee. “He’s probably going to ask her to marry him.”

A series of coughs rang out as she choked on her drink. Her eyes were wide, hand banging at her chest. “I’m sorry. What the  _ fuck _ did you just say?” she spat out, voice gravelly from all the coughing and choking. He bit down on the inside of his cheek to keep from bursting into laughter. “I’m not fucking joking, bitch. What the hell did you just say?”

He cleared his throat and placed his cup onto the table between them before squaring his shoulders and moving his hand to rub at his chin. “‘Paul, man, this girl is… amazing, man,’” he began in what was apparently meant to be a bad Jack impression. She leaned forward, elbow resting on the table to prop her chin up in her palm. “‘Yeah, like, trust me, Paul. She’s the fucking best. I’ve never met anyone like her, and I love her so much, man.’” She bounced with held back laughter while she watched him go on. The interpretation of his brother unwound from his person as he brought himself back to earth to look at her. He wondered how he would have told Jack about her. How this girl crawled through a window at a party, likely with the intention of stealing weed, and then brought him back to her apartment. How she had continued to want to sleep with him. How he somehow ended up doing this dating thing with her. He smiled. “Yeah, and then he said he’s going to marry her someday.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. All she could do was stare at him with a wide open-mouthed smile whilst shaking her head. He had left her speechless. It felt like a checkmate moment, although he was well aware that she was much better at leaving him without words than he would ever be with her. “No shit?” she muttered without taking her eyes off him. 

“I don’t know how many times I have to tell you ‘yes shit’ before you believe me when I say things,” he laughed. However, the conversation with his brother was clear as day. Months ago. Maybe even close to a year. Going on and on about this girl, who Paul would later come to learn was Jane.  _ “She’s got a sister, dude. I think you’d like her.” _ He had a girlfriend.  _ “Okay, but if that doesn’t work out.” _ It seemed like it was working out.  _ “Alright, man, let me know. I think you’d really be into her.” _ He wasn’t about to give Jack the satisfaction of knowing he was right. “But yeah, he’s totally going to ask her to marry him at some point. Don’t know when. He kind of wants to live with someone before making that commitment.”

Emma hummed again as if she were in agreement. “I get that,” she stated, sipping her drink through a green straw. “I just don’t know how Jane’s going to feel about that.” He furrowed his brows. “Jane is one of those… people that won’t live with someone unless they’re engaged.”

Leaning back in his chair, he folded his arms over his chest. “No shit?” he spun back at her with a grin.

She matched it. “Yes shit,” she happily replied. It was something that clearly made both of them smile, and he was okay with that. An inside joke that didn’t have anything to do with him drunk and sad on a bathroom floor. “I mean, I get where Jack is coming from, but they obviously have some shit to talk about.” With her next sip, she shrugged before she placed her cup onto the table. “I mean, I don’t get it. If you love someone like that, does it even fucking matter if you get married at all?”

It was a sentiment he had never thought about adopting himself. It didn’t make much sense to think otherwise, but the mentality was ingrained in him. Graduate high school. Get into college. Graduate college. Get job. Masters degree optional. Meet girl somewhere along the way. Get Married. Buy house. Job promotion. Kids. Dogs. White picket fence. Sensible retirement. Live on pension. Retire to somewhere warm. He and Jess had even mentioned their intentions with dating. It was all about finding someone they would end up marrying. He thought that was going to be Jess. Evidently not, but at the same time, Emma brought up a fair point. Did it really matter at the end of the day if two people were really in love? Would it change anything being married? Probably not. It was just a contract added into a relationship at the bottom of everything. 

“Not really,” he decided on as a response. Logically, that made the most sense to him. What the whole marriage thing was supposed to be about in the modern world was the love. It was about being in love with one’s partner for better or worse. Did he still want to get married someday? Yes, probably, but he was certainly thinking about the motivation behind that. “I’m surprised that hasn’t come up. Jack is  _ really _ into your sister.”

She rolled her eyes. “God, don’t I fucking know it,” she grumbled. “Now that I know your parents and brothers are fucking terrible, it makes sense why he’s around so fucking much when Jane’s home. Jesus Christ, Silvia might as well have birthed a third child named fucking Jack Matthews because he’s just as annoying as a brother when he’s in the house.”

“Imagine having him as an actual brother,” he snorted without being able to stop himself. She barked out a laugh. “I’m serious. Jack is a fucking idiot. I mean… not  _ really. _ Like, he’s smart enough. Hell of a writer, too, but an absolute fucking idiot.” She tossed her head back laughing. He could have listened to the sound all day. Like the melody of an old song he used to love playing in the distance on a radio.”He was always nice, though. Too nice really. He’s like a puppy.”

She clicked her tongue and pointed in his direction. “That’s why Jane likes him,” she explained. “A little dumb but sweet. Jane likes to be the smartest person in the room.” She picked up her drink and took a sip. “She’s going to have an issue with you.”

A flush came across his face. He hoped it was a combination of the coffee and the heat that had hit the back of his neck., but he was sure it wasn’t. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, fully knowing what she was implying. She had been sure to mention that she thought he was smart every time she talked to him since learning he had a major in mathematics. However, every single time he was around her, he felt like his brain had been turned into mush. Was this why Jack was such a fucking moron every time he was around Jane? “Jane’s going to be a doctor.”

“Yeah, and you can do fucking math, my guy,” she replied almost immediately. He hadn’t even been made out to be as smart as she said he was, which was certainly flattering. She wasn’t dumb by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, from what he had gathered, she was sharper than anyone he had ever been interested in. Even Jess, who was very intelligent by the textbook definition of the word, wasn’t someone who kept his interest like Emma did. She was quick. Funny. There was a sharp bite to anything and everything she said. He loved it. Though, love was a strong word. He was certainly having fun, though. “Do you know how many people can’t even calculate a fucking tip?”

“Yeah, you just find the nearest…” He began to explain finding the best total for a tip at a restaurant before he realized that she was absolutely capable of discovering that total herself. Pursing his lips, he looked down into the depths of his black coffee. The color reminded him of the deepest depths of her eyes he had been lucky enough to catch in the early morning light. “You knew how to do that.”

“I did, but it’s nice to hear you talk.” Jess was constantly talking over him. Trying to outdo him in whatever he had accomplished. Anything really. It didn’t even have to be math related, which is where they really collided. She was also a math major, so the accomplishments of tennis and education didn’t really apply to her. Yet, anything she did seemed to be meant to eclipse him. They normally did, so she didn’t want to hear what he had to say. Watching Emma across the table watch him with curiosity was almost overwhelming. He swallowed hard. “Jane is going to be mad that she’s not the smartest.”

“You just want me to fight your sister.”

“So what if I do?”

“I don’t want to fight your sister.”

“You’re no fun,” she told him, but it was still said with a grin. That was what he liked most about being around her, he decided. He felt lighter being with her. Happier even. Perhaps it was the excitement of something new in his life. The adrenaline of taking a risk in sticking around with her hadn’t worn off yet, and he was fully prepared to just ride it out until the novelty had all dried up. “Must be your middle name.”

Pressing his lips together, he nodded while he picked up his coffee again. He shrugged. “Yeah, it’s actually a name my family brought over from the old country,” he explained, sipping the drink only to grimace afterward. The coffee really was shit. However, it was air conditioned, and the company was anything but shit. So he was willing to tough the coffee out. “So be nice or my grandma’s going to come and kick your ass.”

“Your grandma?”

“Yes.”

“Is going to come kick my ass?”

“Yeah, what did you not understand about that?”

She narrowed her eyes at him, attempting to bite back her smile. It seemed as though he had a similar effect on her that she did on him. Just a sheer sense of joy. His heart skipped a beat in his chest. “You’re fucking weird,” she said. She shifted in her seat to peer out out the window. Her shoulders were bare past the material of her tank top. The moth on her shoulder caught his eye again. Grey scale and large, it covered the entire span of her right shoulder, wrapping around her skin. He could remember admiring it briefly while he was wasted that first night, but he hadn’t found himself curious about it. He almost wanted to ask her what it meant, though that seemed like something she would respond with a snort to. Because it didn’t need to have a meaning. To be fair, though, he didn’t know that she would respond like that. He just assued she would. Just below one of the wings that wrapped around the back of her shoulder and the very upper part of the back of her arm, he saw what appeared to be a honey bee. Or maybe just any kind of bee. He couldn’t be bothered to tell the difference between bees, honestly, but it didn’t seem like one that was angry and going to stab him just for existing. Simply a soft looking bee with just a touch of goldenrod highlighting its fuzz. His eyes dragged back up to her face. She chewed on the inside of her lip as she watched people pass by, jaw squared. Her little nose hoop glinted in the light of the late summer sun outside.

All he could think in that moment was how much cooler she appeared to be than him. Like, he couldn’t image what someone like her was doing hanging around with him, but he wasn’t quite ready to question that yet. Mostly, he wanted to lean across the table and kiss her. Though, that was also something he wasn’t quite ready to commit to, so instead, he settled for leaning further back into his chair. “Listen, you underestimate the power of Gigi,” he challenged, only halfway kidding. “She’s a hundred and twenty pound eighty two year old can of whoopass.”

She arched a brow before turning back to look at him, mischief twinkling in her eyes. “You mean to tell me that someone who goes by Gigi is any size can of whoopass?” she wondered. He only nodded. “Somehow I find it hard to believe that. You seem like someone who has a grandma who would bake the fuck out of some cookies and knit the fuck out of some socks for you guys for… Chanukkah?” The way the holiday left her mouth like a strangled question nearly made him spit out his coffee. “What? I don’t fucking know your holidays, dude.”

The laughter came to a slow stop until she stuck her tongue out at him, which kept the giggles going just a little longer. “Well, Gigi doesn’t like baking very much, but she makes a hell of a brisket,” he told her, slightly taken aback when her chin rested in the palm of her hand again to center her focus back on him. “But she’s legitimately the most badass person I’ve ever met. A little mean sometimes, but usually, people deserve it.” He snorted, bringing his coffee to his lips. “Mostly my dad. She thinks he’s a shithead.”

“Well, maybe he is,” she offered, which made him smile. She didn’t know his father, and his father didn’t know her. If they did meet, though, he was certain the showdown she wanted between him and her sister would very likely happen between two very hotheaded people in his life. “I trust this Gigi character. She’s alright in my book.”

“Yeah, she’s… um, pretty great.” It was an understatement to call his grandmother that. She had been his saving grace during the entirety of his childhood. Jack’s too. They always had the summer reprieve of Gigi’s house where they knew their brothers had to be nicer to them. Anytime she was over at their house, their father was always on best behavior, though he often would give her the side eye anytime she came around him. Paul, however, was just happy to be scooped up into hugs and given kisses even if they were delivered with a harsh accent and a sharp personality. “She was in a camp as a kid, but she didn’t let that stop her from being… I don’t know. A good person? She was my favorite person growing up.”

Emma’s brows knit together as she attempted to decipher his words. “Camp?” The way the word came out like a question made him realize that she had her mind on a summer camp. A totally normal place for children to go. Then her eyes went wide. “Jesus Christ, Paul. You’re not shitting me, right?”

He shook his head. “Nope, she and her father made it out and lived in Norway for a while,” he continued. Part of him wondered why he was dilvulging all of this information to someone he barely knew in the middle of a crowded coffee shop, but at the same time, it just felt right to talk to her about basically anything. Like he was a book finally being opened for the first time, spine a little stiff at first but the words were still legible on the pages. “She met my grandpa there, and they had my mom before shipping off over here.”

“No shit,” she muttered, smile lingering on her lips once more.

“Yes shit,” he insisted. “Andreas, Agnes, and Astrid left fucking  _ Norway _ to come to  _ Massachusetts,  _ and I’m not gonna lie, I’m a little mad about it.” She barked out a laugh. “I’m not joking, Emma. They have universal healthcare, and not to mention, less people.”

“Okay, wait,” she laghed, holding up her hand as an indicator for him to pause. “Is your mom Astrid?” He nodded. “So hold the fucking phone here. You mean to tell me, your mother’s name is ass-turd?”

__ For a moment, he sat in silence. Brows furrowed in confusion before her reference dawned on him. “You’re kidding, right?” She tilted her head to the side, smirk playing on her lips. “You’re fucking kidding.”

“If I meet your mom, can I call her Assy?”

He leaned back in his chair and buried his face in his hands. “Good fucking god,” he groaned. “First, you bust out  _ Lord of the Rings  _ real casually.”

“They were Jane’s favorite when we were kids.” She leaned forward as if to tell him a secret. “Not gonna lie, though, Gollum used to scare the absolute fuck out of me.”

He peeked down at her through his fingers. “And now you whip out  _ the Office,” _ he huffed, running his hands through his hair. The filter he sometimes had up had fallen momentarily to his immediate horror. “You’re like the girl of my dreams.” He hadn’t been able to stop himself until it was too late. Snapping back upright, he stared down at her with a now burning red face. “Not that I… I didn’t mean it--”

She ran her tongue over her teeth. “You didn’t mean it?” she clucked, clearly still on the teasing bandwagon. She grinned at him. His stomach did a flip all because she was fucking enjoying tormenting him. “That’s pretty rude, Paul.”

“No! I… you know what I mean!” he grumbled, covering his face once more. What even compelled him to say that? Such a stupid thing to tell her.

The smile she wore was a little softer. Like the one she would wear in the quiet moments they had since being back on the island. It was laced with something particularly fond of him. The blush maintained. “Maybe,” she hummed, leaning onto her elbows to look up at him. “Wanna take this conversation out of here?”

“Yes,” he responded, a little too eagerly, but the coffee shop felt like it was starting to close in on him. Maybe it had filled up since they walked in, though he logically knew all the same patrons had been there since they sat down.

One of her hands came down to pat his, which had landed on the table in his embarrassment. “I know this place down by Starry Cove,” she began, voice growing softer and a little raspier. “Real secluded and shit.” She waggled her eyebrows. “Great place to make out where your brother can’t walk in on us. You game?”

Without another thought, he replied with another overly enthusiatic nod, “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU AS ALWAYS FOR ENJOYING THIS AND COMMENTING OR JUST READING AND LURKING. I APPRECIATE ALL OF YOU 😊❤️


	19. Ancient History II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paul and Emma go to the beach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY I AM FOR REAL RESPONDING TO COMMENTS TONIGHT. I SWEAR TO GOD. Thank you all so much for reading :) <
> 
> A QUICK EDIT: there's a content warning in here for parental abuse both physical and not

“Emma, my feet are soaking wet.”

Emma was bounding up a set of rocks that had formed after years of wear from waves splashing against them. “Sounds like a personal problem,” she teased, waving the sandals she had taken off around in his face. When she turned around, he huffed quietly to himself while he carefully climbed up the smooth rock in his now soaking wet sneakers. He glanced up to watch her round out onto a flat surface, which was a relief. Not that he would have complained about the view otherwise. The shorts she had shimmied into that morning absolutely hugged her ass in a way he didn’t think was possible. It almost made the wet shoes worth it. Almost.

“This also  _ isn’t  _ the lake,” he grumbled, more to himself than anyone else. He was fairly certain she couldn’t hear him over the crash of the waves. “This is the fucking ocean. Big difference.” He had anticipated a nice afternoon at Starry Cove. Enjoying a quiet spot away from the droves of people who were likely crowding the beach for Labor Day weekend. Somewhere in the shade of one of the large old elm trees, tucked away in the cool grass. Children laughing in the distance. The soft blaring of the lifeguard’s whistle. She would kiss him underneath the cover of the elm’s leaves. He would smile. Things would feel good.

But no, instead he found himself with wet shoes and wet pants climbing up a dangerously slippery piece of rock. The ocean slapped wildly against the shore, chasing him up behind her faster that he would have liked. He was a relatively well coordinated person when he wanted to be. Light on his feet during a tennis match. Quickly able to move out of the way of whatever projectile Ted decided to throw at him on any given day. For whatever reason, though, it took all of his will and concentration to climb those rocks without falling and cracking his skull open. Each step carefully crafted to land flat on the surface despite how wet his soles were. His eyes were locked onto the grooved standing stone beneath him until he found himself rounding out onto the flat cavern she had brought them to. Where she was sitting facing away from him, legs dangling out over the crashing water.

He sighed, exasperated, as he tried his best to balance and pull his sneakers and socks off. “Hello?” he grunted, hopping on one foot while the first sneaker was tugged off. He dropped the arm now holding his shoe to his side. “Anything? You got anything for me, Emma?” She continued to stare out into the distance, and for a split second, he was entranced in her again. A perfect silhouette against the blue sky. Hair half pulled back. Her tank top hung low on her back. The small crown tattooed between her shoulder blades could barely be made out. She glanced over her shoulder at him. The light caught the high points of her face, making her look like some shadow laden piece of art. Like something out of a photo buried deep in the midst of loving memories. 

“Get over here,” she finally replied, but her voice was softer than he expected. Less biting and teasing. It almost sounded tired as though she were getting into bed after a long day. Asking him to join her in the midst of mounds of pillows and layers of covers. He toed off his second shoe and then peeled off his wet socks. Inside the cove, it sounded like the inside of a seashell. All the blood rushing around inside of his head. Crashing around like the mightiest ways. The truth was, it was just a blustery late summer day, but he couldn’t help but feel like the pounding in his chest was exacerbating the sound. 

Making his way to sit beside her, he found himself crouching down to reach the spot where she sat. “Em, this really isn’t…” his words trailed off when he was able to share the view she had been enjoying. “Oh.” For as far as he could see, there was nothing deep blue waters for miles. Waves lapped about, pushing up and into the air. He didn’t think much about how isolated they were on their little island. What with the travels back and forth to school, Hatchetfield seemed like just another town, but there was a little more to it. There was a weird way about the island that always seemed to draw him back in. Like there was something waiting for him there on the little slice of civilization in the midst of deep unknown waters. He pursed his lips, nodding as he eased himself beside her, suddenly not caring about the dampness all around them. “Okay.” He peered over at her, only to find her with her eyes closed and chin out toward the sea. “I get it.”

She hummed quietly. Her legs swayed back and forth over the tide that continued to hit against the rocks below. Eyes slowly slid open but remained somewhere out along the horizon. “I used to come here a lot in high school,” she explained. Part of him was dying to look back at the view. It was amazing. Vast and beautiful. The ocean made him realize just how small they were. At the same time, his eyes were stuck on her. Captivated as always with the whisper of a wry grin and a sprinkling of something darker in her eyes. With a soft chuckle, she glanced at him for a beat. “Believe it or not, I was a shit who liked to cut class.”

His eyebrows raised. “You? I don’t buy that for a minute,” he joked. When she nudged him with her shoulder, he felt his smile match hers in its softness. Sitting there with her was right. He wasn’t entirely sure how he knew it, but something in his gut told him so. Everything he ever did was so planned out. There was nothing left to surprise. He chose a safe college with a safe major he enjoyed. He had safe friends and lived in a safe decently-priced apartment. He dated a safe girl with a safe demeanor about her. Now, he was here with a different girl who had completely turned everything upside down in a matter of a couple weeks. “So you cut class and came here?”

“Yep.” Her eyes drifted back out before them. She didn’t often look distant in her stares. She usually was right there in whatever moment they were sharing. It was something he had noticed because no one usually paid that close attention to any interaction they had with him except for maybe Jack on occasion, but she wanted to be there. However, in this moment, she seemed miles away. Somewhere off at the edge of the horizon where the water met land once again. “It was quiet. A little easier to think, y’know?” He hummed a quiet agreement, not wanting to interrupt her. “Things were shitty at school. Shitty at home. I didn’t really want to  _ be _ anywhere…  _ and _ no one really wanted me around. So--” she gestured to the cove, “--I found this place.”

Furrowing his eyebrows, he watched her eyes dart around. It was like she was looking for something she wouldn’t find. Maybe desperately trying to locate some sort of distraction, to no avail. “Oh… I’m sorry,” was all he could muster up as a response. It didn’t seem adequate but at the same time was the best he could do. He didn’t know how to make other people feel better. How to handle others who were clearly hurting. Jess told him it was selfish. He just didn’t want to say something wrong and make it all worse.

Emma shrugged. “It’s whatever, I guess,” she told him. “When I came home after Jane got in the accident, everything felt a little different. I couldn’t wait to get out of this stupid fucking town for so long. I spent the first eighteen years of my life trying to get away, but then I came back. Now, I’m here like every three weeks to spend time with my mom, who I was sure hated me basically my whole life.” She had hinted at tensions between herself and her mother previously, but it seemed difficult to imagine that there was ever a time where the two didn’t get along. “Turns out she just hated my dad, so I guess that’s a win for team Emma.”

She leaned back on her palms almost as if they were out on the beach enjoying the breeze and the waves. A thought crossed his mind about coming back home before it got too cold out to hit the beach with her. Which seemed silly and like he was definitely getting ahead of himself. Her eyes lifted back up to meet his, and she reached a hand over to touch her side. Beneath her fingers and the thin material of her shirt, there was another softly outlined tattoo of an angel holding a sword toward another figure, which it held to the imaginary ground beneath them. He had noticed it the night before as he laid beside her in bed. Having felt a little bold, he ran his fingers along it under the cover of the moon. He had never admired tattoos. The Matthews boys were raised to think tattoos were a marring of the body. That it was something that destroyed a person’s morality. He had found himself in awe of hers, though. Every single one he wanted to know more about but was too afraid to ask. “It’s Archangel Michael,” she told him. He arched a brow curiously. Her lips twisted upward into that teasing grin he had grown used to. “I felt you touching it last night, dork.”

He prepared to dial back and try to explain why he was doing that. Trying to go back on admiring her and the art she decorated her body with. “Oh, shut up,” she laughed, letting her hand drop back beside her again. “It’s okay. My tattoos are fucking cool, dude.” He let out a small laugh. She shook her head. “He’s the patron saint of warriors, and fuck, if Michael Perkins didn’t make a bunch of fucking warriors out of all of us.” It was the first time she had mentioned her father in more than a passing capacity, let alone by name. “I came home, and I swear to fucking god he didn’t visit Jane in the hospital a single fucking time. I was there every single goddamn day… fucking… begging for forgiveness from my sister.” She looked back up at the sky, blinking furiously. “Which you know Jane gave right a-fucking-way. She was just happy I was okay.

“And then fucking… Silvia…” She took a deep breath in. “All the fucking apologies. Jesus Christ. It was like some shitty soap opera.” Her index finger tapped against the rock. “He played us all like a bunch of fucking fiddles. Made us think we all hated each other. Me and Jane were pitted against Mom, thinking that she didn’t love us. Then I hated that Jane was everything I couldn’t be. Jane hated it all because she was never enough for whatever standards he had for her. I was a lost cause, so she had to be the perfect child.” She snorted without looking at him. “Paul, that first therapy session was a fucking shit show.”

There was still nothing he could really say. All the years he spent in his unhappy household there was no thinking that his family did anything but tolerate each other on a good day because of their surface level functionality. “He was always telling me to be more like Jane,” she continued, pursing her lips for a moment before moving on with her statement. “Because maybe then I’d be good. He told my mom it was all her fault that I was the way I fucking am since I’m like her when  _ I _ was just acting out because I wanted someone to pay fucking attention to me for once.” A hand flew to just below her eye, pressing against her lower lid. “Anyway, not like you needed to know any of that. Sorry. I used to fucking come here when I was angry at the world and wanted to be alone for a while. Then I just came here to get a break from everyone and their dumbass selves.” She glanced over at him, eyes a little glossy. “I don’t fucking bring anyone here, so you better feel special.”

At the admission, he did feel special. More so than he probably should have as someone she had just been fucking for a couple weeks. A herd of butterflies erupted in his gut. Foreign and exciting. He scooted closer to her. “If… it um makes you feel any better, my dad’s a shit bag, too,” he told her. She stared at him silently at first before cracking a very small grin. “Yeah, he was totally… this… fucking dictator, but like, Soviet Union and not Hitler or something.” He paused, wondering if the analogy was too much, but she simply kept watching him, waiting for him to continue on with his story. “We were all kept on a pretty tight leash until Dan and Glen got older. Then they could really do whatever they want as long as they didn’t murder anyone. Even then, my dad probably knows a guy.” He tucked his hands under his thighs to keep from digging his nails into his palms as he flexed his hands in and out of fists. “They got shittier, though, so did Jack for a little while. I was the baby, so I got the shit end of the stick.”

He took a deep breath in, looking out over the sea. The water slapped against the breeze. Crashing bellowed around them in the cove, but despite the noise, he felt like if he left his eyes closed for more than a second, he could fall asleep. It was calm there. Safe. “Jack cut the shit when they did that thing where they shaved half my head.” He could still remember the horror in his brother’s eyes when he got home from whatever soccer practice he had been in after school. He could still remember crying into his brother’s chest when he scooped him up into his arms. It was the first time any of his brothers had taken his feelings into account, let alone even considered physical affection an option. “Then he got the worst of it. I don’t know what our brothers did, but Dad… he used to like to push him around. Get up in his face when he would defend me. Slapped him so hard one night he got a fat lip.”

Her brows furrowed this time around. “Oh,” she said more as an involuntary response than anything else.

Panic rose in his chest. “Not that I’m trying to one up you because I’m not,” he sputtered. “I just didn’t want you to feel like… I didn’t want you to feel like you were spilling your guts and--”

“Listen, dude, we’ve all got our shit. Just because you had one shitty childhood and I had another doesn’t mean either one is less valid than the other.” She grinned at him, though her eyes were still sad, and nudged his shoulder with hers. “Fucking therapy. I’ll tell ya.” She moved toward him until their knees were touching. “You can keep going if you want. I’ll be a fucking therapist today. Been to enough therapy that a fucking feel like one at this point.”

Shrugging, he sighed. “I don’t know,” he mumbled, eyes shifting to her. “Your mom knew, I think.” Her eyebrows raised. “Yeah, I told my dad I didn’t want to do… I don’t know baseball or something, and then when I ran away after he started yelling at me, he dragged me around the house by the arm. Dislocated my shoulder. I was little, so I had your mom still. And she tried to help I think. There was someone from CPS who came to the house to check in on us after she started asking me a bunch of questions.” A bitter chuckle left his lips. “Not that it did much, but she meant well.”

They sat in as much silence as they could. The sound of the waves enveloped them. Splashing and receding away from the shore. Sometimes, he almost wished the island would just sink into the ocean, but the truth was, there was still some good in Hatchetfield. Something beautiful hiding within its depths. “Want me to beat your dad up?” she offered, eliciting a more genuine laugh out of him this time around. “Okay, well, you say the word, and I’ll do it. He may know a guy, but he can’t call that guy up if he meets me in a dark fucking alley.”

“Oh, god,” he chuckled, shaking his head. “Please don’t. I’ve got money I still have to inherit from that jackass.” She arched a brow. “I feel like I’ve fucking earned it at this point.” She stared at him with her expression unchanging. “What?”

“That’s fucked up,” she told him. He froze. Had he said too much? Let her see a little too deep. “I mean, I’m fucked up, too.” Once again, she was reading his mind. “I don’t fuck with my dad too much these days, but I can appreciate the long con you’re pulling there for a paycheck. Better be good, though.”

“It’ll… be enough,” he decided to tell her. It was less than what the truth fully was, but she didn’t need to know that. The whole thing felt a little silly to him when he thought about it. However, being comfortable while he made his way into the world didn’t feel quite as silly. “It’s enough to dance around his shit at family gatherings and make my presence known every summer.”

All she did was hum in response, and they were left with the waves again. He wished he had known about this place when he was a kid trying to find anywhere to be but home. That was the only reason he picked up tennis. It was a reason to be out of the house. To spend his summers doing something else. Lessons throughout the year multiple times a week to keep him somewhere else. “I guess we both have--” she clicked out the side of her mouth while shooting finger guns in his direction, “--fuckin’ daddy issues.”

He cracked into full laughter at the sentiment and returned the gesture, clicking his tongue and all. What was it about this girl that had him on the verge of tears one second and then laughing the next? Without breaking from his smile, he just watched her. Her curls tossed around in the wind. Earrings in her ear and hoop in her nose glittered in the sunlight. He could have sworn her freckles did the same, but he knew that wasn’t true. She smiled a brilliant white smile up at him. “I’ve gotta say, bathroom boy,” she began, leaning into him. “Best first date I’ve ever been on.”

“Is that what this is?” he wondered as her head laid out on his shoulder. The whole scene felt very innocent. Like two kids meeting in their secret hideout to hang out. Like they were in some special fort for just the two of them. He hadn’t realized that he had wanted it to be a date until that very moment.

His head rested atop hers in what he could only assume was a picture-esque moment. One for the stock photo of any picture frame. “Yeah, I figured it was,” she responded with a contented sigh. “That okay?”

He lifted a hand to rest on her bare thigh. Tentatively at first before he found his confidence. He swore he could almost feel her smile. “Yeah, that’s okay,” he answered, thumb brushing against her skin. “It was the best one I’ve been on, too.”


End file.
